| . | 06/15/2009
SWEET STORM
By: Eugene Paul
 We’re in a bower, cascades of Spanish moss over a pristine, white bed, gardenias everywhere, a single lantern hung on the great branch bending over the bed. Little by little, we notice that the bed is set on cinder blocks, the gardenias in pails and mason jars atop crates. Our romantic bower is spun out of imagination and love. Up from the floor comes laughter, cries of caution. A beautiful girl in a white dress is put down carefully on the floor, then a grinning young man climbs up, deposits a suitcase, picks her up and settles her carefully on the bed in spite of her cries that she has to wee. It isn’t all romance, not quite. Bo, the young man, has planned ahead; he gets a bed pan out of the old footlocker – there’s also a new ice chest for other surprises –and slides the bed pan under Ruthie. There’s some fussing with the dress and her panties but the two of them they manage quite handily even though Ruthie is a mite embarrassed. Then he stands to one side staring up into the tree as Ruthie weeps.
So, playwright Scott Hudson begins his little love of a play. We are in deepest rural Florida in 1960, heart of hearts Bible thumping, God fearing, Hell and Damnation Southern redneck country, territory plowed and reflowed by writers, playwrights, poets and preachers. Bo is a preacher man like his Daddy and Ruthie, beautiful, ignorant, fearful spoiled child, a cripple as she calls herself, newly out of hospital, has married him. Bo is besotted in love. He has created this idyllic tree house for their honeymoon. Ruthie, uncertain about anything, would rather be on the ground. In a motel. In Clearwater. They never even got married in a church. They were married in the preacher’s house. They didn’t even have a wedding cake. Bo suffers all these blows and still adores her. He is going to make everything all right. They are in the tree house he built for them, for their very own selves alone. On their property. It’s one of his surprises. Mr. Jenkins gave them the whole property even the springs, the Lithia Springs, which he knows is the original Fountain of Youth, right there, right on their property. The magic of it overwhelms him. Ruthie thinks Mr. Jenkins is an -- was an -- old fool. Bo cannot be discouraged. He strips to his brand new boxer drawers. Ruthie does admire them. They even have a snap to keep the barn door shut. Ruthie has to get out of her rain soaked wedding dress. Bo climbs down to collect another suitcase and Ruthie disrobes after putting on a white night gown first.
Playwright Hudson weaves little, real moments, one after another between these two children for they are children, even though Eric Miller, absolutely marvelous as Bo and Jamie Dunn, a revelation as Ruthie, tell our eyes that they are not children at all. As much as they behave like children observing strict proprieties, they are also practical country folk who understand bodily functions and treat them as one more aspect of life the way everybody knows to do. It’s Ruthie’s collywobbles of having placed her entire being in the hands of this young, young man, even if he is a preacher that rattles her moment to moment. She cannot enter into his vision of romance, she’s too practical; the gardenias are in galvanized mails and there’s too many of them they are overwhelming, they make her sick, everything makes her nervous and cranky and spiteful even if she doesn’t mean it. Bo, as understanding and kind and gentle as he can be, finally capitulates. His bower of romance just doesn’t cut it for Ruthie. He’ll put on his pants and take her to Clearwater. And Ruthie veers 180 degrees, especially when another of Bo’s surprises finally captures her fancy. He picks her up and dances with her. Their bodies are of necessity pressed so close. And when Ruthie says she can feel him, we know what she means. They are on the bed in the sweet storm of their love when the hurricane winds pick up. They can’t tell the raging in their blood from the raging of Mother Nature in another guise.
Padraic Lillis has directed with a sure and sensitive grasp of character and environment, pleasing us with the touching, troublesome, smiling-frowning ups and downs he has drawn from his actors to invest in their stage selves. They’re not the only ones doing him proud. Lea Umberger’s marvelous set and just right costumes are part and parcel of the spell making. And the final roar of the winds Elizabeth Rhodes, sound designer, has conjured puts fear in us if not in our lovers. It’s a bitter-sweet storm.
Kirk Theater, Theater Row, 410 W. 42nd Street. Tickets: $26.25. 212-2279-4200. http://www.ticketcentral.com . Rush tickets, $16.25.
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