Stephen Adly Guirgis' The Little Flower of East Orange, now at The Public
Theater, has clear overlaps with his earlier, Our Lady of 121st Street. Both are vivid slices of working-class speech and behavior. Here, an old woman, beautifully portrayed by the radiant Ellen Burstyn, prepares to leave Earth. She's wonderful in a complex role as she drifts in and out of consciousness and dreams and memories.
Guirgis captures the poetic rhythms in the colorful speech of her dysfunctional, hysterical son and daughter, the nurses, the doctor and others.
The entire cast, some in multiple roles, are top level, and as directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, except for Burstyn, the acting is raucous, the language raunchy, the emotions and conflicts all expressed intensely and sometimes cacophonously. Burstyn is sublime in fantasy and in her misty reality moments. Despite some interspersed bathos, especially in the long monologues in Act Two, this is a strong piece of contemporary theater, complemented by Narelle Sissons' flexible set, Mimi O'Donnell's costumes and Japhy Weideman's lighting.
