Word: convents
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...production style less intimate than very small theater-in-the-round. In addition, it has virtually no plot. Playwrights Gregorio and Maria Martinez Sierra have merely chronicled two days eighteen years apart. In the first act, an unwanted infant girl is left on the doorstep of a convent of Dominican nuns, and the sisters decide to raise the child. In the second, the girl, now eighteen years old, is leaving the convent to get married. In terms of standard theatrical material, that's all there...
...used very few words from the dramatic alphabet, but with them they have managed to say a great many things about human nature. Indeed, the irrepressibility of human nature--of personality, of emotions, of love--seems to be the central theme of the play. The young girls in the convent have renounced worldly things, yet within the limits of monastic walls and rules their youthfulness and vitality burst forth in many ways--in girlish giggling, in writing poems, in squabbling with the other nuns. Most important, their maternal instincts awake immediately upon the arrival of the baby. The play does...
With all these delicate shades of meaning, and with all the latent pathos of young girls confined to a convent, Cradle Song can be a wonderfully touching piece of theater. Its off-Broadway performances last winter at New York's Circle-in-the-Square brought handkerchiefs to the eyes of virtually the whole audience, male as well as female. But since the play is intimate and fragile, its emotional effect depends heavily on the skill and subtlety with which it is acted and directed. In this respect the current production at Tufts is only a partial success...
Although the Tufts cast was young and relatively inexperienced, several of the actresses gave admirable performances. Judith LaFrance, as the Prioress of the Convent, was an impressive combination of patience, understanding, and mild authority. Margaret Smith as the crotchety but good-hearted Mistress of Novices rendered the part excellently--quite as well, I thought, as it was done in New York. And Carol Ganem, as "Sister Crucifixion," captured that character's holier-than-thou attitude very well. In the second act, however, she failed to demonstrate the latent love and sympathy that should surge up when she says farewell...
...other roles were less successful. Jacquelyn Zollo was disappointing as Teresa. She lacked the spontaneous, gay, zestful spirit that the young girl should bring into the convent to contrast with the cool resignation of the nuns. In her interpretation of the role, lines and actions that should have seemed perfectly natural appeared as blatant overacting. No one, for example, could envision her climbing a tree, as Teresa is supposed to have done. Miss Zollo's uninteresting performance unfortunately made the second act much less successful than the first--made it, in fact, quite dull in spots...