Theater Review: Nightingale

A Pleasant Story Leaves Us Wanting a Little More
By Lauren Yarger
At a difficult moment in her life, actress Lynn Redgrave went searching for some help and found herself at the grave of the grandmother she barely knew, looking at a blank tombstone whose information had been erased by acid rain.

She saw the blank surface as a way to create a story about Beatrice, so that her story would not be lost. The result is Nightingale, a one-woman show, written and performed by Redgrave while sitting at a writing desk on the Off-Broadway stage at Manhattan Theatre Club.

Redgrave narrates and assumes the role of Beatrice as a young girl, as a young bride and as an older woman trapped in a loveless marriage while occasionally interjecting pieces of information from her own life when they parallel her grandmother’s experiences.

It’s a nice blend of fiction and fact told in front of a folding screen decorated with scenes of English country life (Tobin Ost, scenic design), directed by Joseph Hardy. We follow the sheltered and naïve Beatrice through her courtship with Redgrave's grandfather, Eric, with whom Beatrice is careful not to do more than hold hands, because kissing might result in a baby. We’re there on her wedding night when she follows her mother’s advice to “close your eyes and think of England” and share her loss years later, when she finds love with a farmer, but barely recognizes her need to be with him.

Beatrice lives her life through her youngest child, Robin, on whom she dotes while ignoring her other son and finding constant fault with her daughter, Rachel. She appears to be very unhappy all through her life.

The tale is intriguing and moving, but fails to put writing back on the tombstone since this isn’t really Beatrice’s tale; it’s a life Redgrave has written for her. The work might better have been formed as a piece about an altogether fictional woman. Redgrave’s personal interjections, while themselves interesting and moving, heighten the need to have an actual grandmother to walk along side her granddaughter.

Redgrave does a nice job of bringing the remade Beatrice and her various moods to life, however, with the help of some subtle lighting changes (Rui Rita, design). Over all, it’s a pleasant 80 minutes that will make you miss your grandmother.

Nightingale runs through Dec. 20 at New York City Center Stage I, 131 West 55th Street, NYC. Tickets are available at 212-581-1212 or http://www.mtc-nyc.org/

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