Word: grania
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Lady Gregory, Yeats' old pal, knew the legend and saw in it possibilities for an exploration of the wackv Irish female temperament. Her play Grania, which is being performed quite nicely these days down at Adams House, is a somewhat altered and heightened version of the legend...
...Grania's problem, though she doesn't really know it is that her blood is two-thirds greasepaint. Basically she wants to love and be loved, but something about the condition of life in that confused isle has made her want to camouflage her feelings. The games she indulges in to get her man are to Grania nothing but false...
...inconsiderable job to bring off the nuances of Grania's character. And apart from the first act, when she sounds as if she's taken voice lessons from Evelyn Wood, Margaret Stanback handles the job. She's especially fine when she confronts the pursuing Finn...
...Although Grania is the chief culprit, the three of them bark and bite at one other all night in a manner not unlike the Tyrones in Long Day's Journey into Night. Lady Gregory's penchant for folk dialect and fairly elaborate imagery prevent the encounters from being quite so acerbic, and give the characters a sort of distance. There's not an awful lot you can do with only two or three characters on stage, and director John Pym settles for movement that is simple and unobtrusive...
...dressed in a satin bedspread designed to look a mini-skirt, and another who kept explaining to her boy friend that South Orange, N.J., was a suburban area and not part of a city, enjoyed the show. The success of Pym and his cast in making this fable of Grania more than just a fable suggests that you will...