Avid Laura Linney fans will be delighted at her powerful performance in the stage adaptation of Elizabeth Strout’s book, “My Name Is Lucy Barton.” Linney plays the title character, a writer who is hospitalized for nine weeks after she develops complications from an appendicitis attack. Lucy misses her two young daughters and her husband, who hates hospitals, rarely visits. So he invites her mother to come. Shockingly, her mother, whom she had not seen in years, arrives and stays for five days. Her visit unleashes memories for Lucy, and years later, Lucy recalls those and other important events in her life, sharing them with the audience.
Linney plays both characters, assuming a broad-Midwest accent with a hard edge, to become the mother. Rona Munro adapted the play from Strout’s book, using the author’s well-honed technique of character development through brief character sketches. Much of the dialogue comes directly from the book, and the audience learns about Lucy’s mother from the stories she chooses to tell and, more specifically, the way in which she tells them. Her stories deal with women they both know, some relatives’ other acquaintances. All describe people who are pretty or have money or social status but still wind up alone, unhappy or dead. From her stories and her restrained glee in relating them, we get the picture of the mother as a distant, non-emotional person and understand Lucy’s childhood. Despite not having seen her daughter in years, the mother makes little physical contact. Together the two share the stories. At various moments, the conversation becomes too personal and the tone thorny. The mother flares up when Lucy reminds her that they were considered “trash.”
Through Lucy’s recollections, which she reminds us might not be totally accurate, we learn about her upbringing. The lack of TV, the house that smelled, the poverty. A mother who was quick to hit and a father who suffered from PTSD. Lucy and her siblings were abused, and she relates a few horrific events in her childhood. As a five-year-old, she was traumatized when she’d been locked in her father’s truck, either for punishment or for safekeeping, and discovered a live snake in the truck with her. Then she told the awful story of her father humiliating her brother publicly after finding him wearing his mother’s clothing.
Lucy felt isolated. “Loneliness was the first flavor I had tasted in my life.” Ironically, it was the cold, harsh household that got Lucy out of that environment. She recounts how she constantly remained at school for the heat and the warmth until the building closed for the evening. Reading voraciously and excelling her schoolwork led to her getting a college scholarship and escaping Amgash, Ill., to eventually winding up in New York.
There are confusing aspects in the book which I reread just a couple of weeks ago. The play, under the direction of Richard Eyre, does little to clarify them. While hospitalized, Lucy notices the yellow warning notices on the rooms of AIDS patients and even compares them to the yellow stars the Jews were forced to wear in World War II. Later she learns that a neighbor had died from AIDS while she was in the hospital. These events add little to understanding Lucy’s character.
During the entire 90 minutes alone on stage, Linney commands our full attention. Poised and confident, she creates a sympathetic character. She arouses our support as she tells of her love for her doctor, who comes to see her twice a day, and even visits on weekends. He’s the adult she wished would rescue her from her family. We feel the poignancy of her childhood which ultimately makes her strong.
The stage is somewhat bare, with only a hospital bed and a chair, but it is flanked by rows of audience members, allowing Linney to include all viewers.
Usually blonde and strikingly pretty, Linney has long straight brown hair and wears plain slacks, a top and sweater as Lucy. She appears unassuming, nondescript and almost mousy until she opens her mouth, and then she’s luminous. She gives a compassionate performance and the audience feels for her character.
“A writer must be ruthless,” her neighbor once advised her, and Lucy decides that she is. Perhaps the more accurate term is strong and it is true for actors as well. Maybe that’s why, despite its flaws, the play is a satisfying experience. At the end of “My Name is Lucy Barton,” when the entire audience rises to applaud the radiant actress for her one-woman performance, it speaks volumes.
Elyse Trevers
