Review - The Belle of Amherst

I was extremely fortunate to be offered a comp ticket to last night's performance of William Luce's The Belle of Amherst, starring Joely Richardson.  I almost bought a TDF ticket for the show last week - but, whew, free is even better!  I've always wanted to see this play; I am a big fan of Julie Harris (who starred in the original production), I am a big fan of Emily Dickinson's poetry and I'm a big fan of plays about artists and their art.  The trifecta.  So clearly I am the perfect audience for this show.  And I did indeed have a grand time.  It opens on Sunday, but they were videotaping last night, so I'm guessing it's frozen by now.

The Belle of Amherst is an extremely well-constructed play, that uses Emily Dickinson's poetry, diaries, letters and some clearly fictional 'just for the play' action to put us into the mind of this reclusive woman.  The device is that Emily is talking to us, taking us through important moments of her life - one of her lines is that her sister accuses her of living her life backwards and forwards through time; we see that quality throughout the piece.



photo credit: Hioryuki Ito

Joely Richardson is charming and delightful - not every actress could hold the stage for 100 minutes (divided into two acts), but she does an excellent job.  Her facial expressions and gestures are always so interesting and unexpected.  She really gives an engaging performance, and a viable idea of how Dickinson became a recluse, yet still found such passion in her writing.  I did find her to be a little overly youthful in some sections where she maybe wasn't supposed to be (we're told that she's 53 when the play begins).  And there were some contemporary vocal inflections that crept into her speech, which did vaguely annoy me.  You know that upward inflection that more and more young women have begun to adopt, where it always sounds like they're asking a question because they don't want to make a statement?  There was a hint of that, here and there, which doesn't seem like 19th century speech to me.  But maybe I'm just overly sensitive to it because it drives me insane in regular conversation with otherwise perfectly bright young women.

I think Richardson was fighting a cold, so at times she seemed unable to catch her breath or to be able to get a word out because of a stifled cough or sneeze, but to be honest, it did add a certain spontaneity to her speech patterns.  I was quite moved several times during the play, especially during the scenes where her passion was so inflamed she had to recite her own poetry.  I thought that was a very smart way to get the poetry into the text without being trite.  And her speech about her nephew moved me profoundly, which you can all imagine since I'm gaga over my own nephew.

Although I think the play itself is well-constructed, it did also seem a bit busy at times, with trying to move the actress around the stage a lot, probably to make sure the audience didn't get bored.  But it rather distracted me from what she was saying when she had to keep moving from space to space.  I preferred the quieter moments, with just the dialogue from her letters or from her poetry - that's where the power was.  I can understand the impulse to make everything seem natural and fluid, but I was less engaged when it got too busy, especially in the second act.

I give a thumbs up to The Belle of Amherst - it was amazing to me how powerful and evocative Emily Dickinson's writing still is, and bravo to William Luce for finding the perfect combination of his own writing and hers to make a compelling night at the theater.  And thumbs up to Joely Richardson, too, not only for soldiering through her cold (she was visibly moved during the curtain call, as if she hadn't expected any audience support), but also for taking on an iconic role by an iconic actress - that takes some serious cojones.  Seeing Julie Harris in the play is one of my 'time machine' dreams, but I'm ever so glad I saw Richardson do it last night...