Word: cottingham
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...manage to evade death until near the end. As Sir Lawrence Wargrave, a notorious "hanging judge," Woody Hill paces through his scenes like a hawk, interrogating other characters in courtroom style and calmly remarking, "We've been invited here by a madman, probably homicidal." Miss Vera Claythorne (Reid Cottingham) uses physical objects perfectly, obsessively adjusting the rings on her finger and hovering in the background with a cigarette like an angel of death...
...Reid Cottingham dominates this bizarre drama as Susan, the troubled title character, who is losing her grip on reality. Susan hates her life. And why shouldn't she? Her husband, Gerald (Mark Brazaitis) is a befuddled priest more interested in his historical study of parish life since 1386 than in sex. Her son Rick (Andrew Ott), who has always been afraid of women, is now a member of a London sect devoted to parent hatred, which doesn't make her feel any better. Aside from the uptight Gerald, her only companion is her antagonistic sister-in-law, an incompetent Cornish...
...Cottingham's first-act sarcasm is brutally funny, and the show moves along nicely under Brent Eller's direction. The plot is perfectly symmetrical. Will Susan choose reality with a family that doesn't love her, bland Marsala wine and a black lunch table? Or will she opt for the illusory world of dreams, champagne, a family that treats her like a goddess and a pristine white table with fine china? We feel for Cottingham, who has captured Susan's despairing loneliness and repression behind her cynical facade...
Rounding out this side of the family is Reid Cottingham as Kate, Eugene's loving, efficient, over-stressed mother. Cottingham is very effective. Her portrayal of this domineering character gives this production an underlying consistency which it might otherwise have lacked. The orders she gives her children are as mandates from on high. When Kate does, upon rare occasion, reveal her emotions, they are believable and evoke sympathy...