Philadelphia Weekly

There have been numerous plays exploring the African-American experience in America, but few are as compelling as Elyzabeth Gregory Wilder's Gee's Bend, currently at the Arden Theatre Company in an exquisite production from director Eleanor Holdridge.

Beginning in 1939 and spanning nearly 70 years, the play tells the story of a mother and her two daughters in Gee's Bend, an isolated African-American community in Alabama.

As Bend opens, the mother Alice (Marjorie Johnson) is making a quilt in front of the family home while she talks with her teenage daughters Sadie (the dynamic Edwina Findley) and Nella (Kala Moses Baxter in a marvelous portrayal). Sadie also enjoys the craft of quilt-making, but Nettie denounces it, saying she'll buy whatever she needs from a store.

It's not the only difference between the siblings. Unlike her sister, Sadie has a man who fancies her. A landowner with 100 acres of cotton, Macon (Kes Khemnu in a quietly effective performance) proposes marriage to Sadie by giving her a key to his yet-to-be-built home. The key is an obvious symbol, but what the future holds for Sadie and her family is unexpected.

In the first part of Bend, Wilder efficiently lays the groundwork for her story, but the play grabs us in the second half when we're reintroduced to the characters more than a quarter-century later.

It's now 1965, and the civil rights movement has come to Gee's Bend. Against her husband's wishes, Sadie registers to vote and goes to hear Martin Luther King Jr. speak. Inspired by King, Sadie drinks from a whites-only water fountain and then joins the march on Selma, an experience that has a profound impact on her marriage and sense of self.

The third part of the one-act play explains how Sadie and her mother's handiwork came to hang in museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the quilts are on display.

Bend isn't the first play in which an African-American family's spirit triumphs over racism and economic hardship. But Wilder's writing is incisive and unique.

Similar to the quilts which are composed of bits and pieces of the women's lives, Wilder's story is stitched together from the memories of the quiltmakers in the Alabama community. The result is that while the characters are fictional, every word of the play rings true.

The Arden's dazzling production couldn't have come at a better time. There's an alarming shortage of plays by women on area stages and an equally disappointing lack of roles for women, especially minorities. In Wilder's uplifting play the crippling forces of racism and sexism are ultimately little match for the determined and talented women of Gee's Bend.

Talley's Folley

The star of the McCarter Theatre's production of Lanford Wilson's play is neither Richard Schiff nor Margot White--the actors who perform Wilson's two-hander--but John Lee Beatty's set, a once majestic but now dilapidated 19th-century Victorian boathouse that serves as a reminder of a family's past glory. It's in this boathouse on the Talley property that Schiff's Matt Friedman, a 42-year-old Jewish accountant, and White's Sally Tally, a 31-year-old unmarried nurse's aid and a member of one of Lebanon, Missouri's wealthiest but most unhappy families, engage each other in an evening that will decide their future. As much a dance as a discussion (the meeting is repeatedly referred to as a "waltz"), director Marshall W. Mason's staging is exceedingly busy. Yet the characters' constant movement more resembles a hunt, with Matt stalking the evasive Sally. Even when the chase stops and the two are physically engaged, Schiff and White seem out of sync. Wilson's quintessentially American tale offers a provocative look at capitalism, war and the nature of prejudice, but the happy conclusion feels forced, and the production never quite finds its footing. (J.C.R.)