Oh, what would authors do without inns, airports, bus stations, hotel lobbies and other refuges for transients? What more reliable formula for intrigue than a bunch of strangers thrown together - preferably strangers in a state of material or psychological upheaval and letting them just be themselves? And when the times, or the places, of their encounters are also in flux, how can something interesting not happen?
The personnel gathered in Miss Constance Tuckerman's Guest House (analogous to a B&B, for you kids) cannot really be called strangers, having for several years summered together on the Louisiana Gulf Coast. But as the title of the play hints, all are approaching midlife crises - even the young (and, in one case, gay) sons and daughters, who must soon determine a way to avoid their elders' sorry fates. What their goals have in common is that each involves breaking with their former lifestyles - through divorce, marriage, relocation. Gradually, however, we see their plans succumb to spiritual torpor. In the end, the only contentment lies in acceptance of their enervation and their allegiance to the status quo.
What this rootless band of bourgeoisie also has in common is Lillian Hellman's unflinching insight as she recounts their stories. Herself a native of the Deep South, she knows well the propensity of its denizens to dramatize, romanticize and elegize the slightest frissons in their placid existence, regional traits thrown into stark contrast by the inclusion in the assembly of a stoical Bostonian, a cynical New Yorker and two unsentimental Europeans, who regard their companions' histrionics with bemusement as they plot their escapes.
Comparisons to Chekhov are inevitable, but the troubles of a once-vital but now waning ersatz aristocracy take on a new immediacy when occurring in our own backyards only half a century ago. Under Nathaniel Swift's direction, the cast for this Eclipse Theater Company production approach their roles with reverence and compassion. Granted, the stamina of the actors with extensive experience at old-fashioned three-act plays - Chuck Spencer, Millicent Hurley and Judith Hoppe among them - enable them to inhabit their characters, rather than merely impersonate them. But even if three hours (with two intermissions) seem, likewise, a long haul for modern audiences, the empathy generated by relationships still evident in our society today evokes suspense sufficient to make waiting for the succession of irony-steeped resolutions worthwhile.
