Here again among the works of local writers is a novel posing as a play. If performed, it should be as chamber theater. A distinctive, poetic style proves both attraction and fooler.
The title gives both central metaphor and motif. It also refers to a real alligator who bit off the arm of reclusive, cigar-smoking Miss Lila. Known in the swampland setting as "The Alligator Lady," she befriends heroine Lucy and later becomes mother-surrogate, and covertly, a model for her. She's also the only one, other than Lucy, who talks about herself directly to us. Whether that's to establish her final link with Lucy or because the playwright didn't figure out how to dramatize her information (or no one knew the finer points of staging readers' theater) is unclear.
Insisting on wearing only nightgowns (just because she likes them), Miss Lila directly contrasts with Lucy's mother Marlene, who first appears shaken up by an auto accident, after which she's flirted with the driver. Marlene likes to dress in finery she has leeched off newly dead women whenever she's not selling it or looking up their widowers. Having dragged Lucy all over the map in her search for men and a more perfect union, she's now adopted a "family" from an old photograph and an accent. Marlene doesn't care about lying and maintains that "to be southern is eccentric."
So is Marlene's pride in her breasts. She keeps calling them her "girls," signaling they're going to be important. As one might expect, Lucy is as "boobless" (conveyed in a quite funny way) as fatherless. Since Marlene won't say anything other than that Lucy dropped onto earth like rain, Lucy needs to search (need one say through a lot of metaphorical swamps?) to unearth his identity. What makes it harder is Marlene taking off with the "accident guy" to ready him to accept her and Lucy permanently. Meanwhile, we see how, as an innocent teen, Marlene got preyed upon by a reptile of a foster father and how her "girls" are now making her sick. Before she dies of breast cancer, Lucy grows up under Miss Lila's influence. She reveals a secret, one she can use to help Lucy attain literary fame. So what if Lucy proves absolutely immoral in accepting it? "We're all swimming with alligators. We just don't know they're there all the time." And because she's attacked, isn't she entitled to a little recompense? But what do we the readers - er, audience - get for suffering through melodramatic scenes of rape and dying? More narration, more of that central metaphor, and by cracky, an epilogue! All covering 40+ years in brightly lit pools of white, yellow, red, blue.
Impressively, though, the cast triumphs against formidable odds, notably a non-set and non-direction. Sara Trembly, despite being too old for the earlier scenes as Lucy, makes us care about her. She also seems at ease with the most poetic speeches and avoids cliches, especially the Southern ones that lie dangerously (dare we say like alligators?) in the script. Sheri Cox demonstrated Marlene is actually quite complex. She handles maudlin sick-to-death scenes as well as possible. Seeing Patti O'Berg on stage again locally after a considerable absence is a treat. Though her voice seems strained, she conveys Miss Lily's spirit and self-satisfaction, along with some welcome comic relief. Moreover, O'Berg lets down her famous long blond hair that figures in still another metaphor.
As foster father (later biological father) Mr. Belden, Tom Aposporos proves properly creepy in a seduction scene and goony when older and half mad, connecting strangely with a famed instance of tampering with Tylenol. Had Miss Lily not encouraged -- and Lucy not accepted - plagiarism as an acceptable way to achieve success, the feminist points made by author Sylvia Reed might have scored higher. Unfortunately, she plunges Lucy from moral high ground into a swamp.
