Review: QUILTERS at 1st Stage

Just over a year ago, I reviewed 1st Stage's production of N. Richard Nash's "The Rainmaker," about a conman offering hope to a drought-racked farm family. Now, the Tyson's Corner-based company is presenting another story of hope, love, and determination in the prairies.

"Quilters," with music and lyrics by Barbara Damashek and book by Damashek and Molly Newman, depicts the hardships faced by frontier women in Texas and New Mexico in the nineteenth century. The play is based on the nonfiction book "The Quilters: Women and the Domestic Arts," by Patricia Cooper and Norma Bradley Allen.

At the beginning of the show, Liz Weber as Sarah greets the audience and introduces us to her daughters, played by the rest of the ensemble: Ezinne Elele, Patricia Hurley, Kalen Robinson, O'Malley Steuerman, Maggie Leigh Walker, and Abigail Weinel. The cast members portray numerous characters in a variety of situations throughout the play. 

Each of the play's musical numbers and vignettes is introduced with a newly-stitched section of quilt representing some aspect of frontier life, such as seeking a proper suitor, motherhood, education, disease, and working to sustain the family farm. The completed quilt (and play) provide a figurative and literal tapestry of life in the epoch.  In a particularly poignant number, a mother recounts in a letter the reasons her family cannot afford another mouth to feed where the rest of the ensemble recite the ingredients of the homegrown remedy she will take to induce a miscarriage. In a humorous scene, several women huddle together in a log cabin during the storm, whimsiclaly wondering if the trees from which the logs were taken are "really dead."Director Deidra LaWan Starnes gets fine performances from the ensemble. The live orchestra led by Jake Null and Pauline Lamb's choreography provide engaging song and dance routines.

Sarah Beth Hall's set is minimalist, leaving the cast largely to suggest settings, in the manner of "Our Town," and similar works. Early on, long blue sheets of fabric are waved to create a river where a baptism is held. Later, we see the opposite end of the elemental scectrum when red sheets create a devastating fire.

"Quilters" runs two hours and ten minutes with intermission. It would make ideal viewing to remind a young person with unreasonable Christmas present requests how fortunate they are to live in the modern age.

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