She’s childish, demanding, and curmudgeonly. She’s Mabel Tidings Bigelow, who at the age of 21, shattered all world records for swimming the English Channel. This penultimate achievement underscored a life through which run veins of humor, loss, love, acceptance, regret, and self-denial. In Famous Door’s staging, under the adept direction of Gary Griffin, Bigelow’s life story, remembered from the vantage point of a 90-year-old Mabel one Fourth of July weekend, becomes a dramatic meditation on the sacrifices one makes (especially women) in the pursuit of love, happiness, and personal fulfillment. Pride’s Crossing’s playwright Tina Howe makes her story universal…although it has at its center an amazing athletic achievement, its heart speaks to all of us. This is a story about the strange turns all of our lives take and how the choices we make shape us, and how those choices aren’t often what we thought they might be.
Famous Door has staged this lyrical and moving account with grace, humor and perfect pacing. John Stark’s gorgeous scenic design of large, off-kilter picture frames, with an impressionist ocean wave backdrop underscores Mabel’s life eloquently. The play takes us through Mabel’s story, presenting us with perfectly realized scenes from Mabel’s childhood (where we get a glimpse of her origins and the environment that spawned her achievements as well as her mistakes), her young adulthood (where her interest in proving herself as an athlete competed mightily with her desires as a woman), middle age (when the choices she made and her former glory ripen past their prime and present us with a bitter harvest) and finally, we see Mabel as an old woman, fighting to keep her dignity as infirmity of mind and body drag her down. It’s a moving portrait, one which the talented ensemble at Famous Door and director Griffin have writ lovingly, with a finely tuned ear to detail and truth.
In a biographical portrait piece such as this one, so much weight rests upon the shoulders of the lead. Fortunately for us, Hanna Dworkin, as Mabel, is a joy to behold, evoking our sympathy, empathy, and wonder in equal measures. Dworkin’s performance, shifting seamlessly from childhood to teen, to middle age and elderly, is nothing short of amazing, a true testimony to not only the craft of acting, but to the art. Dworkin completely loses herself in the character and in doing so, creates an indelible impression, one that is so real that we never doubt her age, or her character, for a moment. Dworkin is orbited by a talented (and gender-bending) ensemble, who inhabit many different characters throughout Mabel’s life, painting each with clearly defined, simple, and always believable strokes. Particularly good were Bruch Reed, as Mabel’s gay brother, Frazier (and her thwarted Jewish love, David Bloom) and young Andrea Washburn, who, as Mabel’s daughter and great granddaughter, displays a gift for character far beyond her years. We’ll be hearing a lot more from Miss Washburn.
Pride’s Crossing closes soon. Don’t miss it.