The students at Adelphi University’s Department of Theatre will perform the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “Crimes of the Heart,” on Tuesday, April 10 through Sunday, April 15.
Also a recipient of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award, the drama was initially presented by the Actors Theatre of Louisville, then Off-Broadway, and then on Broadway, where it established author Beth Henley as a major voice in theatre. The story was later adapted for the big screen in a 1986 film starring Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek.
The scene is Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where the three Magrath sisters have gathered to await news of the family patriarch, their grandfather, who is living out his last hours in the local hospital. Lenny, the oldest sister, is unmarried at 30 and facing diminishing marital prospects. Meg, the middle sister, who quickly outgrew Hazlehurst, is back after a failed singing career on the West Coast. And Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after having shot her husband in the stomach.
The sisters’ troubles, grave and yet somehow hilarious, are highlighted by their priggish cousin, Chick, and by the awkward young lawyer who tries to keep Babe out of jail while helpless not to fall in love with her. In the end, the play is the story of how its young characters escape the past to seize the future that the New York Times said “overflows with infectious high spirits.”
For tickets and a list of showtimes, go to www.pac.adelphi.edu.
The Adelphi Performing Arts Center is located at 1 South Ave. in Garden City.
