A Poignant, Fiercely Funny Debut So Long on Lonely Street by Sandra Deer

By WILLIAM A. HENRY III

A coarse, grasping Southerner, bellowing his frustration at not being able to seize his family homestead, halts in his tirade long enough to realize that he is talking to an empty room--empty, that is, except for the coffin containing his recently deceased aunt, to whom he kowtowed for years in hopes of getting his way. He turns to go and shouts, "You hateful old woman! I never liked you!"

It is not giving away much to reveal this gothic moment as the curtain line of So Long on Lonely Street, a zesty, poignant and fiercely funny comedy. Far more shocking revelations have already emerged along the way, on matters ranging from race to motherhood to incest. Playwright Sandra Deer has created a clan of faded gentry who mingle the greed of the family in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes with the lubricious dementia of Beth Henley's Crimes of the Heart. Yet Deer has a kinder heart toward her characters than either author. The result, while likely to strike some playgoers as scandalous, is the most impressive playwriting debut of the New York season.

The turf over which the Vaughnum cousins are scuffling is Honeysuckle Hill, a rundown mansion with 25 acres of barren land. Cousin King (Stephen Root), the conniver, and his sugarcoated dragon of a wife Clairice (Jane Murray) want to raze the house and put up a "Christian shopping center." The twins, Ruth (Pat Nesbit) and Raymond (Ray Dooley), resent that plan but do not want to move back in either. Miss Anna (Lizan Mitchell), a black family retainer whom everyone believes to be an illegitimate child of Grandfather Vaughnum's, feels that the house is rightly hers. Bobby (Fritz Sperberg), the lawyer who hopes to marry Ruth, thinks everyone is going off half-cocked about the legalities.

Deer's real interest lies in exploring the unexamined assumptions that families live by. Each of the Vaughnums has been suppressing some secret; each ends by realizing that some seeming impossibility has come to pass. While all this adroit plotting is going on, the characters are interacting so naturally, with rowdy humor so integral to their personalities, that Lonely Street seems more a slice of life than a "well-made play." Even in the two most finely honed scenes--when Ruth and Raymond discuss why, despite their affection, they have always avoided each other, and when Miss Anna learns the truth about her parentage--Deer never allows the audience enough emotional distance to perceive what is happening as mere craftsmanship. She benefits greatly from Kent Stephens' direction and a superb cast. Mitchell, as a woman both addled and coy with age, has the showiest part.

Like much in the New York theater these days, Lonely Street originated at a regional company, Atlanta's Alliance Theater, where Deer is literary manager. Director Stephens transferred with the show, as did Set Designer Mark Morton and half the cast. The production is impeccable, and in a season with a dearth of worthy British imports, the main stem must be grateful for an American "import" of this caliber.