January 13–20, 2000

theater

Problematic Play

Despite a stellar cast and a tight production, Collected Stories still comes up short.

by David Anthony Fox

Collected Stories

Walnut Street Theatre, Independence Studio 3, 825 Walnut St., through Jan. 16, 215.574.3550

Donald Margulies, fast becoming one of our current theater’s most frequently produced playwrights, can be the perfect miniaturist. This season’s off-Broadway success Dinner With Friends tells of two marriages heading in different directions. Nothing grand is attempted, but the writer unerringly captures a vulnerable contemporary world.

In Collected Stories, Margulies tries for something much bigger. Lisa Morrison (Megan Bellwoar), a naive young graduate student and aspiring author, studies with established writer Ruth Steiner (Ellen Tobie). Steiner, in her 50s as the play begins, is both embarrassed and intrigued by Morrison’s childlike admiration. At their first tutorial (held in Steiner’s apartment), the older writer comments on Morrison’s work, but increasingly the conversation turns personal. By the end of the session, Morrison is poised to take on a bigger role in Steiner’s life — as assistant, protégé and confidante.

It doesn’t take a genius to see where this All About Eve-ish tale is going. Early in Act 2, Morrison is quietly poised, dressed in black and carrying a smart, Prada-style satchel (she may not yet write like a New Yorker, but she certainly accessorizes like one). She has achieved some early success with her fiction — success that leaves Steiner feeling ambivalent. Months later, when Morrison’s first novel is about to be published, Steiner reads a galley proof and discovers that a central scene is borrowed from a story that she told Morrison: the very private story of an old love affair, something never intended for publication.

By the end of the play, Collected Stories takes on big issues. When does artistic inspiration become plagiarism? Who owns memories? But these good and worthy questions come too late, and the play’s fragile framework is insufficient to support them. Take for example the all-too-tidy initial setup: Steiner is tough, Jewish, taciturn — Morrison is pert, WASP-y, effusive. Steiner won’t answer the telephone — Morrison can’t bear to leave it unanswered. They are a cutely mismatched pair, something out of The Odd Couple, and difficult to take seriously.

The problem is compounded when Morrison’s writing is so poor. The work Lisa initially brings to Ruth — a bulimia memoir — is hackneyed, something a kindly teacher might generously praise from a high school student but hardly suggesting promise. Are we to think that Lisa, apart from her ability to inspire Ruth’s confidence, has no real talent? Why then is the older writer interested in her? It’s not clear, and in any case Ruth’s criticism is hardly better than Lisa’s prose: She chides her student for over-use of adjectives, but lets equally egregious style problems go unchecked.

Margulies wants to immerse us in the world of New York literati, but there’s something smug and gossipy about his style. Names are dropped left and right: "Ed" Doctorow, Janet Malcolm. He’s quick to come up with the pretty aphorism. "Life is too short for The New Yorker," says Ruth, and the audience laughs, feeling pleasantly sophisticated. But the earnest and humorless Ruth, often published in The New Yorker, would never say such a thing. What are we to think of a playwright who will undermine his characters for the sake of a joke?

Whatever the play’s flaws, the Walnut Studio’s production serves Collected Stories honorably. Richard M. Parison Jr. has directed fluidly and with unobtrusive confidence. As Ruth, Tobie achieves real stature: She is believable as a distinguished intellectual, and to her credit does not attempt to soften an often-unsympathetic character. Tobie is very fine in the quick sparring conversations with Lisa, but the final scene, when Ruth’s anguish and rage are manifest, needs more. As Lisa, Bellwoar is saddled with a thankless and underwritten role, over which she triumphs. Bellwoar may marginally overplay Lisa’s initial ditziness (this is more Margulies’ fault than hers), but by the second scene her warmth and charm give the character a dimensionality that goes beyond the script. It’s difficult to imagine the role better played.

Virtually everything that can be done for Collected Stories is done here. It’s just not enough.