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Local News
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Saturday, May 17, 2008, 3:00 AM
'Ladies' receive standing ovation By Hal Tarleton | Daily Times Opinion Editor "Come all ye fair and tender ladies," Quinn Hawkesworth's haunting voice sings on a darkened stage as she begins her lifelong tale of a harsh and adventurous life in the Virginia mountains. Lee Smith's acclaimed novel of the same title is the basis of "Fair and Tender Ladies," which was adapted for the stage by Hawkesworth. The novel provides an ideal foundation for a stage production, which opened Friday night at the Edna Boykin Center as part of Theater of the American South. (Smith was at the play and is speaking at Barton College at 10 a.m. today.) The authentic voice Smith gives Ivy Rowe rings through her lifetime of correspondence, and Hawkesworth rides that authenticity in her demanding, emotive performance as the mountain girl who becomes a woman and endures all that life throws at her. Hawkesworth, looking like a young Loretta Lynn, takes the stage as a child, barefoot and in homespun cloth. She is a prodigy, a star student in a place where schooling seems trivial. Using a sparse set, Hawkesworth heaves the burden of bringing Smith's creation to life onto her narrow shoulders and carries it through an amazing two-hour performance. Ivy is a perceptive child, whose insight shines through her colloquial expressions ("I was the onliest child"), as she recalls gunfire on Christmas morning and the tradition of "Old Christmas." She tells of falling as she toted water from the spring in the cold evening beneath a dark winter sky, and her tears nearly froze on her face. A deep sigh and long pause awaits her next sentence: "My daddy died." He died on his pallet on the floor before the fireplace. Ivy is brutally honest: "The day we buried my daddy should have been the worstest day of my life, but it was not." She experiences the aching in her "vitals" as she reaches adolescence and succumbs to the advances of young Lonnie Rash. "I am grown up now, even if I am ruint," she decides. But Lonnie goes off to World War I, and leaves her pregnant and unwed. He is killed in the war. Ivy is courted by handsome and wealthy Franklin Ransom, but it is Oakley Fox, who escapes a mining disaster, that she loves and eventually marries. She settles into a life back on the farm far removed from the promise her teacher Miss Torrington had seen. She has twins in 1929, then two more children. "Bits and pieces of me have fallen off," Ivy admits. Hawkesworth plays the part with a measured series of movements about the stage. She sits, she stands, she sprawls, she spreads a tablecloth and then folds it, she picks up a letter to read it, then slams it back into its box. There is nothing static about this performance. And it is an amazing performance. The thousands of lines of continuous monologue are flawlessly recited with the appropriate inflection, emotion, poignancy and pregnant pauses. Friday's opening night audience responded with a well-earned standing ovation. Even the blaring of a rock band playing for the Wilson Chamber Commerce's Small Business Week celebration a half-block away did not distract Hawkesworth from defining Ivy Rowe, though it did prompt some of the audience to move closer to the stage. "Fair and Tender Ladies" is performed in repertory with "Steel Magnolias" today and Sunday and again the next two Thursdays through Sundays. See www.theateroftheamericansouth.org or call 291-4329 Ext. 10 for details. tarleton@wilsontimes.com | 265-7812
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