Painting Churches at the Keen Company

I already know that in seven months when I look back at all of the live performances I saw in 2012, Tina Howe's Painting Churches at the Keen Company will be at the top of my favorites list.

Tina Howe is one of my favorite playwrights and as soon as I heard that a new production of this wonderful play Painting Churches was being produced, I knew I had to see it, regardless of who was in it.  But fortunately, I didn't have to worry about the casting - the brilliant Kathleen Chalfant is playing the matriarch Fanny Church.  Matching her brilliance, John Cunningham plays Gardner Church.   Their daughter is played by Kate Turnbull, who holds her own.

Painting Churches is about an aging couple - she's a Boston socialite, who is trying to hold life together, and he's an erudite poet scholar, who is ungracefully slipping into dementia.     They are leaving their large Boston home out of necessity. Their daughter, a portrait painter and art teacher, has come home to help with the packing and to meet her personal goal of painting their portrait.  The daughter, who visits her parents rarely, is unable to accept the changes in her parents and their circumstances.    It's a poignant story that is told with much wisdom and wit.  

This efficient and beatuiful production is directed by Carl Forsman.  The set is designed by Beowulf Boritt.   Especially imporant, costumes are by Jennifer Paar.   She does a great job of dressing the eccentric socialite Fanny who has succumbed to shopping in thrift stores out of need, both monetarily and to occupy herself. 

Kathleen Chalfant was everything I wanted her to be and then some as Fanny.   She is at once hysterical and heartbreaking.  She quietly draws you in and then lowers the boom as she fights to move on and open her daughter's eyes to the truth.   She is no-nonsense yet nonsensical and whimsical.  John Cunningham plays Gardner with much dignity, but also with complete abandonment when it calls for Gardner to slip out of his own right mind.   I was thrilled to see both of these actors live, as I had only previously experience them on Law and Order.

I wondered at the effect that this story had on this mostly elderly matinee audience.  There was much laughter and applause and I couldn't help but think that perhaps they saw the truth behind the pain of aging and dementia.  

The Keen Company's Painting Churches is at The Clurman, on the lower level of Theater Row on 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues.    Tickets are available via Telecharge at 212-239-6200 or online.  It runs through April 7th.  

Tina Howe's Painting Churches

What a play! This was just a reading of Painting Churches, but it was so rich and so well done that it felt like a full production. Marian Seldes was Marian, that is to say simply brilliant. As Fannie, the mother, she had us eating out of the palm of her hand, laughing hysterically one moment and crying at the next. I enjoyed Kellie Overbey as the daughter. She has a lovely voice and presence. I completely fell in love with Evan Thompson as the father. He was so sweet and so funny. Tina was there to introduce the play - a play she opened 25 years ago at Second Stage. It was her first play to win a good review. In fact, Marian was in that original cast. What a funny person Tina is and oh my, can she write. The words from Painting Churches are still running through my mind. The house was packed mostly with patrons. Those of us with free tickets picked up at noon today were in row N or further, but the theatre is so great it didn't matter. Angela Lansbury was there too and was really the only luminary in the room besides Marian, of course. I've decided that I would like Marian to read me every evening.

Tonight: Marian Seldes and Kellie Overbey Read at 2ST

Painting Churches, a nominee for the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, is Tina Howe’s humorous portrait of a painter on the verge of celebrity who tries to capture her eccentric parents on canvas. Time Magazine called the play “a radiant, loving, and zestfully humorous play about subjects that darken the mind with icy forebodings…”

This reading will be held at Second Stage Theatre, 307 West 43rd Street @ 8th Avenue.

TICKET DISTRIBUTION
Tickets for the general public will be available at the Second Stage Theatre box office starting at noon on the day of each reading and will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Unclaimed tickets will be released at 7:30PM.

Friends of Second Stage donors receive guaranteed seats for readings throughout the season, starting at 2 readings for Member level donors ($125+) up to reserved House Seats at all readings for Champions Circle members ($1,800+). Please call Daniel McCoy, Manager of Individual Giving at 212-787-8302 ext. 111 for information on joining.