The choice of “Taking Leave” by Nagle Jackson, directed by Georgette Richmond, proved a great start to the fifth season of The Naked Stage Readers’ Theatre last weekend.
Nagle Jackson is probably best known for his play The Elevation of Thieves – winner of the Onassis Foundation International Playwriting Contest, and many Molière translations.
Published in January 2001, “Taking Leave” is the story of Dr. Eliot Pryne, played by Mark Bennett. A 62-year-old English professor and expert on Shakespeare, particularly “King Lear,” Pryne is imprisoned by the ravages of rapidly escalating Alzheimer’s disease.
Despite the stringent limitations of Readers Theatre – no movement, costumes, set or props – Bennett’s portrayal demonstrated exceptional skill, as he used his mellow, powerful intonation and inflection, reinforced by appropriate facial and eye expressions, to convincingly convey the multiple facets of his tormented mind.
Fred Koesling, as Eliot 1, depicted what remained of the intelligent and coherent pre-Alzheimers professor, drawing a dramatically emphatic comparison to the gradually diminishing sense and logic of his declining “self” with plausible sensitivity and gravitas.Pragmatic Mrs. Fleming (Amy Friend) is tasked with caring for her bewildered patient who, convinced he’s in a hotel, keeps packing to leave. Friend’s portrayal of gentle concern, occasional frustration and a resigned understanding of her difficult patient and his daughters, is exceptionally well drawn and entirely believable.
Following the Lear pattern the three sisters have radically different agendas. Elder sister Alma (Barbara Pruitt) is reluctant to look after her father herself, but doesn’t want to put him in a nursing home as her inheritance would be diminished. When it’s suggested to Eliot 1 that Alma is “feckless,” he replies, “No, she’s completely devoid of feck.” Meanwhile, middle sister Liz (Pamela Richardson) wants to put her father into a home so she can continue her burgeoning acting career.
Youngest daughter Cordelia (Tina Leonard) is a delightful counterpoint to her two older sisters and their agendas when she arrives unexpectedly from Paris. Despite her history as a “wayward child” and drug user and with echoes of King Lear’s Cordelia, she makes it clear that she is prepared – and able – to see her father’s illness through to the end. Beautifully played and with just the right amount of humor despite facing the bittersweet reality head on, Leonard made the character of Cordelia her own, adding a powerful element – particularly to the final moments of the show.
Guided throughout by perfectly timed and clearly spoken, if a little softly, narrator Sandy Jakubek, the difficult, emotional and often avoided subject – laid bare by “Taking Leave” – was cleverly written, engrossing and well played. It engendered many laughs, perhaps a few tears, much discussion at the interval and a well deserved standing ovation at the end.
Richmond is better known as an actress, board member and erstwhile president at Lakeside Little Theatre. In this, her first role as a director, she certainly picked a good play and cast. As the audience’s response confirmed, she and her cast acquitted themselves well.