Regional

Amazing Grace

 (Pittsburgh Public Theater, Pittsburgh; 457 seats; $34.50 top)

By CHRIS RAWSON

A Pittsburgh Public Theater presentation of a play in two acts by Michael Cristofer. Directed by Edward Gilbert.
 
Cast: Marsha Mason (Selena Goodall), Stephen Bradbury (John/Preacher), Frances Chaney (Esther/Foreman), Aaron Eckhart (Young Man/Lawyer), Laurie Kennedy (Vivian/Prosecutor), Larry John Meyers (Judge/Warden), Adina Porter (Georgia/Fortune teller), Kate Young (Mrs. Fennel/PR woman).
 

Michael Cristofer's new drama has the heart, soul and brains to match his Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Shadow Box" (1977), and director Edward Gilbert has staged it with precision and care. Despite its warm aurora of spiritual redemption, "Amazing Grace" is probably too taut, spare and grim for a successful commercial outing. But its insight and dramatic maturity commend it strongly to further regional theater exposure.

Loosely inspired by a true story, this is a very American tale of lovelessness and spirituality. Though sensational, it is no less believable than the stories of O.J. Simpson, Susan Smith or the Menendez brothers. This world premiere owes a good deal to the feeling, sometimes inspired work of Marsha Mason as serial killer Selena Goodall. But that would be nothing without Gilbert's impeccable direction, precisely married to Cristofer's unadorned storytelling. And Gilbert has cast the essential supporting ensemble of seven flawlessly.

We meet Selena tending her aged mother, sunk in childlike senility. The poison Selena administers seems almost inadvertent, almost understandable. We come to know her in by-play with her caustic friend, Vivian (a 24-carat performance by Laurie Kennedy), and in touching flirtation with Vivian's brother (sympathetically awkward Stephen Bradbury).

As the story proceeds chronologically, with the occasional interjection of ribald humor, intimations of spiritual crisis cut across the naturalistic flow. Southern evangelical religion heightens Selena's frantic conviction of sin. We catch a glimpse of its source in her youthful sexual abuse, the "rats in the cellar" that give rise to the poison (literal and figurative) in her life. But Cristofer never trivializes character with easy explanation, and the ensemble functions as a character itself, bearing silent witness, providing a faintly menacing context of straitened gentility.

In Act 2, Cristofer astonishes us. In prison, Selena receives a gift of love she (and the audience) can barely recognize as such, and she develops a miraculous power that tests credulity and faith. Then the playwright abruptly returns us to the reality we knew but had not faced. The end leaves us to sort out our own beliefs and feelings. "Amazing Grace" deserves a more detailed theological reading, but the grace it asserts and dispenses is amazing indeed.

The play's weakness is its central coolness. The enigmatic Selena is an actor who hides even from herself. But while Cristofer may not tell us as much as we'd like, he never tells us more than we need. This is a play for grown-ups that assumes we can follow a complex story without having it detailed in neon. Though vague and delusional, Mason's Selena is yeasty with life. Her flushed eyes gradually focus as she struggles toward clarity. Long on stamina and devoid of self-indulgence, she still unleashes a chilling cry worthy of King Lear accusing his gods. Larry John Meyers' warden is a perfect miniature of punctilious concern. And nothing in the play is more astonishing than Adina Porter's wraith-like Georgia, a startling lesbian spokesperson for love.

At the end, Kate Young's coolly cynical press aide forces us to share the preparations for execution. Then Vivian, Selena's vivid counterpart all along, tests our capacity for forgiveness. The ensemble turns literal witness to complete a ritual with deep communal significance.

David Sumner's visual design is perfectly spare -- gray furniture against gray floor, black scaffold against bare brick. Tom Sturge's fluid lighting is impressive yet without affectation, using many patterns and intensities to suggest warmth, coldness, loss and transfiguration.

Though emotional in the playing, "Amazing Grace" also sticks to the intellectual ribs, challenging us to confront the possibility of an amazing grace that transcends the sometimes casual brutality of life.

Set, David Sumner; costumes, Martha Hally; lights, Tom Sturge; sound, James Capenos; casting, Patricia A. McCorkle; production stage manager, Fred Noel; music consultant, Rosemary Welsch. Artistic director, Gilbert; managing director, Stephen Klein. Opened Oct. 20, 1995. Reviewed Oct. 19. Running time: 2 HOURS, 20 MIN.