Anna Deavere Smith in Let Me Down Easy

On Friday evening we walked to Harvard Square, had a pleasant dinner at Henrietta’s Table at the Charles Hotel, and joined the audience for that evening’s performance at the American Repertory Theatre, in this case, a one-person show by the uniquely talented Anna Deaveare Smith.  This is entitled Let Me Down Easy , subtitled “a play in evolution”, and indeed, when I look at the New York Times review of a January production of the same show in New Haven, it is clear that much has changed since then.

As in her earlier one-person shows, this one is drawn from a wide range of interviews, and what we see is Ms Smith impersonating the various people’s speech and mannerisms while reproducing some of their interview responses.  Her exceptional ear and eye allow her to add a scarf here or a jacket and tie there to a basic costume of shirt and slacks as she changes her posture and voice to populate the stage with a succession of unique individuals.  I can’t personally say how realistic her imitations are, but during the first of a number of “appearances” by Harvard Memorial Church pastor Peter Gomes, and a later interlude with Professor Elaine Scarry of Harvard,  audience members laughed affectionately and appreciatively,  so she must have gotten something right.

According to the Timesreview, the earlier version apparently explored different aspects of and attitudes toward the human body and its frailty, with a diversity of topics and interviewees that the reviewer had found frustratingly diffuse.  As the show has evolved, Smith has focused this topic to that of mortality and to the more elusive topic of grace.  The opening section of the show consists of interviews with Peter Gomes, Reverend James Cone, and opera singer Jessye Norman, discussing what the term grace means in a religious context, including in its most familiar religious use: as part of the hymn “Amazing Grace”.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten where I had put my pen for the first half of the show, so I didn’t take notes on this and can’t tell you what Peter Gomes or Rev. Cone said about it.  But if you’re interested,  check the weblog of the ART, where they invite people to say what the word means to them.  I confess I haven’t had time to look at all of the entries (nor have I entered anything myself). 

The show is performed on a thrust stage, and we were in a seating area that was reasonably close to the side of the stage.  The blocking called for her to turn toward us from time to time, and her voice and body were compelling enough that we could still appreciate the characters even when we couldn’t see her face.  Still, had we been in the main section, we would have had a better view of the images projected on the back wall (although, in the case of the images from the Rwandan genocide, that is not a pleasant view), and it would have been interesting to observe how she changed her facial expression to reproduce the variety of characters–not that I necessarily would have done so, as I tended to concentrate on the words that were being said anyway, even when she had turned toward our seats.

Since I had ordered my tickets online, the ART had my email address, and I came home from the play to find an email inviting me to take a survey sharing my thoughts on the show I had just seen.  (I suppose there are interesting privacy issues here, but I didn’t particularly mind in this case).  One of the questions was which character had been my favorite, which was difficult to answer, since the words of each character set off those of the others to underscore the sense that mortality is something that we each share with all the people around us, from Rwandan genocide victims (and perpetrators) to health care workers and patients, both the elite (e.g. the dean of Yale Medical School, who describes her experience as a patient) and the lowly (a doctor at Charity Hospital, New Orleans, who talks about working at the very last hospital to be evacuated in the powerless aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). 

A particularly interesting section to me was the interview with musicologist Susan Youens of Notre Dame University, who describes Schubert’s musical output after he discovered he had syphilis (“the AIDS of the 19th century”), with the sound of the adagio movement from his quintet in the background.  I had studied her book on Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise and this was almost like meeting her in person.

I was also very moved during the final section, which deals with death itself.  There is a long piece from Peter Gomes in which he describes how he presides at funerals, during which I felt that I was actually there among the mourners, deriving comfort from the words that the deceased is crossing to “a place where you are known”, followed by one from an orphanage director in Johannesburg, describing how she has to tell children that they have AIDS.  During each interview piece, the name of the character is projected, together with a descripton of their occupation or position in the world, and a brief phrase from the words they speak.  This last one is “don’t leave them in the dark.”  At the time, I had interpreted this as not allowing these sick children to be alone with the knowledge of how the illness would weaken their bodies and carry them toward death far too soon.  But now I realize it can also be about discussing the topic of mortality in general: to leave someone in the dark means not to tell them something important.  Just as Trudy Howell cannot afford to leave the children in the dark by not telling them about this “ugly germ” in their bodies, we cannot afford to keep each other in the dark by ignoring the mortality that we all share.

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Tags: Performance reviews, religious ideas, Theater

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