DIRECTOR’S NOTES

“Sugar and spice and every known vice—that’s what Henley’s plays are made of,” muses critic Richard Corliss. This sweet-coated sting theory is the premise of her plays. Beth Henley herself admits her infatuation with the unusual theatrical experience: “I’ve always been very attracted to split images. The grotesque combined with the innocent, a child walking with a cane, a kitten with a swollen head, a hunchback drinking a cup of fruit punch. Somehow these images are a metaphor for my view of life; they’re colorful. Partly that is being brought up in the South; Southerners always bring out the grisly details in any event.”

So we see Lenny holding up her box of birthday candy--assorted cremes—each piece, already decimated by Meg, as she looks for the ones with nuts. After Babe shoots her husband, she asks him if he’d like a glass of lemonade. Chick, who wouldn’t dare go to town with holes in her stockings, puts on pantyhose in her cousin’s kitchen with the grace of an elephant. These are the split images that are “Henley hallmarks,” and that led her to the Pulitzer for this work.

--Dr. Anna Filippo

--This production of Crimes of the Heart is in memory of Joey Filippo