How fortunate we are to have Cynthia Meier in Tucson. There isn’t a role she touches that does not benefit from her nuanced performance. She was the essence of “A” in Three Tall Women—mean spirited, dotty, afraid and funny.

Edward Albee leaves us no doubt about his parental relationships. He was adopted by a wealthy family at age two, expelled from most schools he attended, and out of the home at 18. His first play, The Zoo Story was produced in 1958, at age 30. He was openly gay and that created conflict with his family. His most famous work, Whose Afraid of Virginal Woolf, illuminates Albee’s talent for fierce dialogue and unhappy marriages, as does this play.

Three Tall Women is a faithless homage to Albee’s mother. In an interview with The Economist, he said, “(the play) was a kind of exorcism. And I didn’t end up any more fond of the woman after I finished it than when I started." She is petty, vain, weak, penurious, scornful of her husband, and contemptuous of her son. What’s not to love? But in the audience, we become entwined in A’s self-love.

The first act is all A; ill, distracted, on the one hand disdainful of her caregiver, played skillfully by Patty Gallagher; then coyly seductive as she acknowledges her total dependence on this person. With her is the lawyer’s assistant, played by Holly Griffith, who needs signatures on papers that A chose to ignore. The assistant’s snotty recriminations that cut into “A’s” monologues were delivered in an officious manner. Perhaps this was director Christopher Johnson’s intent, but they seemed flat, almost an afterthought to the give A time to pause.

In the second act, Meier, Gallagher and Griffith play A at three ages: Griffith in her late 20’s, Gallagher in her 50’s and Meier in a healthier old age. As the two older women reminisce, the young A contends that she will never become them. All’s well that ends well, if you, like Albee, feel that death is the ultimate freedom. Likely he never felt free of his guilt until A’s death.

In a play written as a “tour de force” for a mature actress, Meier shone.

Highly recommended
Playing at The Rogue Theater in Tucson AZ through March 25, 2018
www.theroguetheatre.com

In 1990 I was privileged to experience Glenda Jackson as Courage at the National Theatre in London. I remember it being rough, with Jackson shouting, cannons bombing and flashing and pots, pans and drums creating cacophony. So much for my Berthold Brecht education.

Flash ahead 30+ years to Tucson and The Rogue Theater which embraces a genre of theater not often found here, e.g. Brecht, Faulkner, Beckett, Pinter, Albee… The Rogue’s production of Mother Courage brought the 30 Years’ War between Sweden and Germany in the 1600’s alive on a 30 x 30 stage, complete with a manually rotated platform on which Courage’s wagon moved through the scenes. When Brecht wrote the play, most scenes included lyrics for songs, but they were not scored. Tim Blevins of The Rogue wrote original scores and voila, you have a war musical – and a cynical comedy as groaning one-liners pierce the dialogue – a bit of 17th century vaudeville.

I could not begin to compare the two productions, but Cynthia Meier’s Courage was a gruesome testament both to how to survive a war and how to rationalize the death of your children. More than the horrors of war, Mother Courage is about the horror of the business of war and how it profits the very rich, feeds off the poor and provides employment for the industrious.

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