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The House of Lily
by Lydia Stryk
directed by Curt Columbus
March 1-April 1, 2001
Steppenwolf Theatre
Tickets available by calling the box office (312) 335-1650,
or at http://www.steppenwolf.org
Heart, hearth and home; love, memory and relationships mingle in The House of Lily, a new work by playwright Lydia Stryk premiering at The Garage at Steppenwolf. Flashes of humor and a wealth of poignancy weave together in this tale of three characters: Lily, her widowed father Zbigniew ("Zig"), and her best-friend-and-love-interest, Gina.
Steppenwolf's The Garage is an informal space, and for The House of Lily, an intimate house of two double rows face one another across the stage. Seated opposite a bank of audience members, you may wonder at the start whether you will be distracted by their faces. Don't worry. There's plenty on stage to engage the attention and emotions.
The modern-day setting of Lily's home is orderly, contemporary, comfortable in a stiff sort of way; a reflection of Lily and her life. Lily, a middle-aged feminist, soon revealed to be both Ph.D. and lesbian, is on the brink of the arrival of her aged father, Zig - now a baffled and uprooted widower, come to live with her for good, so she can take care of him after the death of his wife, her mother. While Zig misidentifies Lily and Gina as women from his past, Lily struggles over lack of the parental approval for which she waited all her life - indeed, which fueled her to strive, achieve, fund and build the house into which she has welcomed Zig. Meanwhile, Gina bears Lily's harangues, defends the nature of love, and finally returns the passion Lily has spent two years hoping would flourish. Lily's familiar roles and long-held diatribes are challenged from all sides. In the end, Lily's intellectual armor fails and it is emotion - and love - which fashions richness from the sterility of her life.
Such is a simple spin on the story. However, director Curt Columbus and playwright Lydia Stryk have combined to make The House of Lily a production that is far more complex. Indeed, they seem to have set out on a journey to a specific place - and ended up somewhere else equally intriguing. The play seemed to be less directly about items such as the "dire secret" (which might equally be interpreted as the old man's fading mind's desire or fantasy to have done what he implies he did), Lily's hidden deification of her father despite her feminist ranting, or her pursuit of Gina as a love interest. Such thoughts, expressed, seemed to remain more at mere words on stage. Instead, The House of Lily presents a wealth of resonance, most grippingly, the portrayal of the aging, mentally wandering Zig - as well as themes of love vs. intellectualism; of the fate of one who harangues equally against men, women, marriage, family, children, without having experienced them; of fantasy, wishes, reality; of the interchangeability of relationships - wife, mistress, lover; mother, daughter, father - and the unifying constant of them all, love. Most touchingly and movingly, of aging, helplessness, memory and the security it brings - the security of living in the past. We can empathize with Zig: perhaps his only anchor in a now-uncertain world is the ability to identify Lily as Ellen, the wife to whom he was the center of all things, and who was, perhaps, equally his own center.
The cast members form a fine ensemble. Martha Lavey (also Steppenwolf's Artistic Director and a Steppenwolf Ensemble Member) is a very human Lily - boldly drawn, brittle, at times abrasive, wrapped in the intellectual armor of a Ph.D., bristling with theories, harangues, and feminist diatribes. Such armor sends out its spikes against everyone until one person finally gets through. Amy Warren is a luscious, pert, loveable Gina, brimming with vivacious energy, and ultimately, bringer of that generative energy into Lily's life. Gary Wingert delivers a powerful performance as Zig, a man coping, lost in a strange, unfamiliar place. Though welcomed into Lily's house, his home is back with the memories - back with the familiar contours of his life with his wife, Ellen. At times Zig's half-wandering words flower into poetry. His is the most touching character, and the most likely to make us weep.
On the technical side, the intimate size of The Garage is well suited for a script of this type. The stage set juxtaposes Lily's home and the restaurant where she visits with Gina, its barrier (also employed as Gina's bank teller carrell) a visual reminder of the barrier between her two worlds. Period music, music of our own or our parents' memory-time, evokes a nostalgia that lends much to the play's mood. There were one or two confusing technical touches - it was not clear what the occasional use of bluish light and distorted, dreamlike music was meant to indicate, exactly - but otherwise, lights, cues, sounds and the like worked well.
Contemporary plays can run the risk of triviality - of being so realistic they merely represent the everyday. The House of Lily sidesteps such a pitfall. The emotions are very real, the story has many levels of personal resonance with the viewer, and you too will be caught up in the spell, from the opening line - "My father is coming to live with me!" - to the wry and tender ending. Simple space, simple staging, funny, poignant, realistic emotion. The House of Lily, showing at The Garage at Steppenwolf through April 1, 2001.
The House of Lily
Cast:
Lily - Martha Lavey
Gina - Amy Warren
Zig - Gary Wingert
Design:
Set Design - David Wolf
Costume Design - Natasha Djukich
Lighting Design - J. R. Lederle
Sound Design - Christopher J. Johnson
--Katherine Rook Lieber
Katherine Rook Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual and Performing Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.
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