—”Delta Dawn”
Membership yields privileges not extended to those merely invited to party at the club. And if you’re serving, forget about it. Looking back from our 60-year vantage point the definitions of privilege, and other less subtle messages about race and gender embedded in Carson McCullers A Member of the Wedding seem prescient, if not positively up to date. The novel and the more awkward, author-adapted play don’t tell a coming of age story so much as a coming to grips story, full of dark humor and the usual humid tropes of Southern fiction that aren’t half as nostalgic as they appear to be at first gloss. It’s unfortunate that so many of the things that make the original story so very compelling and special in novel form, don’t translate especially well to a medium as immediate and economical at live performance. Action is the currency of American family drama, and although there’s always a lot going on in A Member of the Wedding, for two moody acts, nothing really happens.
Irene Crist has style, and a knack for telling stories with political underpinnings. But the director who gave Memphis a memorable Angels in America marathon, and even managed to highlight rebellious threads running through Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, hasn’t been able to do much with Member. The show’s few scene changes crawl as somber music makes the already ponderous pacing feel that much slower and heavier.
Member is a fantastic character study, considering the fluidity of gender identity up to, at least, a certain age, as well as the cultural infantilization of African-Americans, who are lumped in with the kids as burdens to be endured by serious white adults. It tells the loose story of Frankie, a tomboy who has fallen in love with her brother, his bride to be, and their impending wedding generally. Frankie imagines that this wedding might be her ticket out of small town life where she is excluded from clubs, and all but ignored by her father.
Wanting for companionship Frankie spends time with her six-year-old cousin John Henry, and they are together, the main companions of the family’s African-American maid Bernice. And they talk. And talk. And talk.
There are some fine performances here. Lauren Ledger is an appropriately lanky Frankie, and she seems to have a real affinity for the role. Holden Guibao makes an adorable John Henry and the always excellent Delvyn Brown is once again superb as Honey, the doomed jazz trumpet player, smelling of reefer and smoldering with anger and frustration.
As Bernice, the one-eyed domestic and serial wife, Judi Bray is an understated force, knowing herself and the precarious position she occupies.
As with the novel, the play revolves around these characters, with others popping in now and again just long enough to see them, but not long enough to make any kind of real impression. Likewise, the play’s final tragic events are dropped on us like the atom bombs Frankie reads about in the newspaper. There is so much good content here, but the form remains problematic.
A Member of the Wedding is often very funny, but it’s often the kind of laughter that may catch in your throat. It’s material Southern literature fans will want to check out, and rewarding for those with the patience to see it through to the end.
For more information about Theatre Memphis’ NextStage production of A Member of the Wedding, here’s your click.