I saw My Name is Lucy Barton; adapted for the stage by Rona Munro from Elizabeth Strout’s novel and directed by Jackie Maxwell on Wednesday evening.  It’s a one woman show featuring an astonishing performance by Maev Beaty who is on stage for the entire play, which is little short of two hours long.  She plays Lucy Barton and her mother and all the other characters are described not shown.  In some ways it feels more like a book reading than a stage play.

The structure of the story telling reinforces that.  It’s told from the point of view of a successful, middle aged New York based writer describing (acting out) an episode some years earlier where she was in hospital for nine weeks not knowing whether she would live or die.  She’s visited by her mother (though rarely it seems by her husband and children which seems very odd) and in their conversations we learn the family history.  It’s of dirt poor folk in the depths of the Illinois corn belt.  The father has severe PTSD from his WW2 service.  It’s a dysfunctional family living in a dysfunctional society with dysfunctional effects.  The American Nightmare in fact.  From this Lucy escapes via sundry scholarships at the price of becoming more or less completely estranged from he family.  She marries a man who is not so different if one trades Maine potatoes for Illinois corn.

Nothing in Lucy Barton’s life “works” except her writing.  When we first meet her she’s estranged from her birth family.  As her story unfolds she becomes progressively distanced from her husband and her children.  Dramatically the interest is in the well timed slow reveal as revelation after revelation takes us further into the abyss.

As a piece of theatre it has some interest.  Beaty’s performance is very powerful.  It takes great skill to hold an audience for nearly two hours with little more than a bed and a chair for help.  There are projections that fuzzily suggest the New York beyond the hospital’s windows.  There’s sound design that is very subtle; perhaps too subtle for a hospital.  But it still feels a bit too much like a novel to really work as a play.

My Name is Lucy Barton by Canadian Stage runs at the Bluma Appel Theatre until November 3rd.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz