Overdrawn Account

By T.E. Kalem

There are two main dramatic uses of memory. One is retributive, and the other is alchemistic. In retributive memory, the playwright squares accounts with the past, attempting to wrest present justice from past injustice. Arthur Miller's The Price is a perfect example. In alchemistic drama, the goal is to transmute the heavy base metals of the past into present lyric gold, as Tennessee Williams did in The Glass Menagerie. Generally speaking, the main thrust of retributive drama is moral, and that of alchemistic drama is aesthetic.

While Paul Zindel is not on a writing par with Miller or Williams, he and his characters have a joint account, both retributive and alchemistic, and draw most of their dramatic funds from the memory bank. In his new play, And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little, Zindel seems to be overdrawn at the memory bank. His wacky humor is present, along with his abrupt pathos, a way he has of pulling the rug out from under the heart, and his frequently well-honed dialogue. But under it all, the plot, point, purpose and direction of the play seem to have been lost.

Tell and Tell. The story concerns three teacher sisters for whom life has proved a bad trip. Catherine Reardon (Estelle Parsons) is a lush. Her younger sister Anna (Julie Harris) is a vegetarian, and that is the least of her nuttiness. The married sister Ceil (Nancy Marchand) is a cool and predatory school superintendent who seems to have frozen into her post. Anna has been involved in some vague sexual incident with a boy at her school, and Ceil has shown up with the papers to have her committed to an asylum. Catherine and Ceil spar on the subject, and the strange life they led with their divorced mother is dredged up, but nothing changes substantially. What should be show-and-tell is mostly tell-and-tell.

What is left is an abundant supply of jokes together with jarring poignancies. The two interrupt each other like hot and cold running water. Some super performances are to be savored. Julie Harris has played Little Girl Lost so often that she can sleepwalk her way through the part, but she is too much of a trouper not to do it beautifully. Nancy Marchand is as flinty as the Maine coast. As a visiting fellow teacher, Rae Allen is a delightful vulgarian, and lard would not melt in her mouth. Top honors go to Estelle Parsons, caustically jovial, slapping her consonants with the back of her tongue, and looping about her housely chores while knocking back the gin and nibbling raw hamburger hidden in a Fanny Farmer box. Vote her the girl you would most like to go on a bender with.

* T.E. Kalem

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