Here is your chance to see the visions Mrs. Welty’s words so vividly painted inside your head, right in front of your eyes. The McComas Hall Theatre will host the Mississippi premiere of “June Recital” Sept. 26-28. While the show has been performed in major cities such as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia since 1980, it has never been performed south of the Mason-Dixon line until now. It all started when theatre instructor Jo Durst required the textbook Five Approaches to Acting, written by “June Recital” director and co-adapter, David Kaplan.
“His publisher asked everyone who ordered the book to write a critique, so I sent him a letter,” Durst said. “He contacted me and eventually asked if we could host the performance on Eudora Welty’s birthday back in April. Unfortunately, we couldn’t fit it into our season, so we offered to open the 2002-2003 season with it and he was happy to oblige.”
“June Recital” is a one-woman play where the character and events are taken from Welty’s short stories, “June Recital,” “The Golden Apples” and “Why I live at the P.O.” and a piece from the novel “Losing Battles.” The play tells the history of Miss Eckhart, the piano teacher in whom Eudora Welty confided while writing her autobiography. Then, it leaves the Miss Eckhart story and goes into the other Welty stories.
Kaplan, who is also hosting a workshop on storytelling for the MSU theatre majors, has staged plays in 45 states. In New York he staged “The Council of Love” and “The World of Ruth Draper.” In the South, he staged Tennessee Williams’ “A Perfect Analysis Given by a Parrot” and “Frosted Glass Coffins” for the Birmingham Music Festival. He is the director of several one-person shows.
Starring in the play will be Brenda Currin, a two-time Obie Award winner known for her roles in “The Word According to Garp” and “In Cold Blood.” Currin earned her master’s degree in anthropology and is the co-founder of a program for adolescent girls in New York City called What Girls Know. Currin has been praised by several newspapers.
“Miss Currin remains a wonder. Miss Currin’s voice, body and spirit are completely inhabited by the small-town eccentrics and Gothic demons that haunt the Southern imagination of the writer Eudora Welty,” said Frank Rich of The New York Times.
The Boston Herald’s Terry Byrne described the play as “magnificent, a symphony of names and phrases and scenes from Welty’s works. Spoken rhythmically over Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto, the words tip off her tongue and blend like harmonic chords.”
Also, Mississippi native Phillip Fortenberry is in charge of the music. Producer Edwin W. Schloss is also the associate producer of the Broadway revival of “Kiss Me Kate” for which he received an Outer Critics Award.
While the credentials of the cast and crew may be enough to sell tickets, Durst insists that Currin’s performance is one we can relate to.
“It is a delightful tribute to Eudora Welty,” Durst said. “It’s a wonderful journey with familiar characters everybody recognizes, and it is a justifiable tribute to her work.”
However, you don’t have to take her word for it. To find out for yourself, come to McComas Hall Theatre at 7:30 p.m. from Sept. 26-28. Tickets are $5 for MSU students and faculty and $10 for the general public. For more information, call 325-9810.