Review: MCT Romances Friendship and Poetry in Ruhl's DEAR ELIZABETH

The romance of letter writing centers Milwaukee Chamber Theatre's (MCT) Midwest premiere of Dear Elizabeth. Playwright Sarah Ruhl's character study of Pulitzer Prize winners Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell carries the two writers through their 30-plus year friendship, the ups and downs in producing award winning poetry while maintaining personal relationships.

Ruhl often writes throught provoking plays usually placing women front and center--several seen in Milwaukee, including The Clean House and In The Next Room (Or the Vibrator Play). that create equality with their male counterparts. Dear Elizabeth clearly displays the growing, sublime friendship, love and respect between thes two poets of parity, perhaps a more difficult relationship and less understood when between a man and a woman. WhileBishop wrote only about 100 peoms in her life, agonizing over singular words, the prolific Lowell produced work at a quicker literary pace, and the play highlights the contrast in styles.

A luminous Carrie Hitchcock, named a 2015 Ruth Schudson Leading Lady, portrays this shy and reclusive Bishop drawn to the gregarious, and sometimes manic Lowell, played by Hitchcock's real life partner Norman Moses. Each poet called American's New England home, and Steve Barnes envisions a romantic set design, where starlight illuminates the cozy Studio Theatre, and a shallow moat of water surrounds the center stage.

The two begin this ambiguous relationship early on in their lives on the shores of the Atlantic coast that each called home and eventually determined the course of their seperate lives. One touching moment has Moses as Lowell cliimbing on a ladder in the water, pants rolled to his knees, reaching for a crescent moon hanging in the star-studded backdrop--an unattainable goal at that time. .

Playwright and Renaissance Theater Co-Founder Marie Kohler directs these two actors with sensitivity, every interaction a delicate moment to savor--including how each writer encounters intense lonliness and solitiude. Ruhl dispels the romantic myth writing poetry, or novels, anything, could be easy. Each illustrious writer struggled with deep, personal issues whether alcoholism or mental health that Ruhl captures realistically and without sentimentality. During the performance, Hithcock and Moses give a rare picture that geniuses have these real issues in daily life to deal with and still they produce work. As Ruhl writes: "torments of purpose and directions."

In this reflective and uplifting paly touched with humor and original music by Joe Cerqua, MCT challenges their audiences to celebrate friendship, one of the most difficult emotions to convey on stage and then perhaps renew their own friendships---relationships forged over years and strengthened through time. When a funeral interrupted this writing over this very week, a memorial service for a young man of 60 years who had struggled with dementia and the husband of a good friend, the time remembering his life illustrated succintly that life is indeed precious. Standing alongside to hold a friend's hand or listen when they are struggling becomes more valuable than gold, as Bishop and Lowell discovered, whether thorugh a letter, phone call or visit. Dear Elizabeth subtly calls the audience to romance a special friendship this fall.

Milwaukee Chamber Theatre presents Sarah Ruhl's Dear Elizabeth in the Studion Theatre at the Broadway Theatre Center thorugh October 18, 2015 . On October 19, atteend a special performance of "An Evening With Carl Sandburg" perfromed by Jonathan Gillard Daly iat 7:30 p.m.in the Skylight Bar and Bistro. For more informmation on performances, special events or tickets, please call 414.276.8842 or visit www.milwaukeechambertheatre.com