Marija's Pictures

By Judith Newmark

POST-DISPATCH THEATER CRITIC

11/01/2006

Croatian playwright Lydia Scheuermann Hodak, who made her first visit to America for the U.S. première last weekend of her drama "Marija's Pictures," stood in the lobby afterward, shining with joy.

Despite limited English, she managed to say very clearly that she loved director Philip Boehm's production for Upstream Theater, declaring it the best one that she has seen (and she's seen it in five other languages). She also said "Marija's Pictures" tells a true story.

As if anyone would doubt it.

A wrenching account of the widespread wartime rape in the former Yugoslavia, "Marija's Pictures" belongs to a genre of drama that is most associated with stories of the Holocaust. Such plays may be earnest, even clumsy; they don't need a lot of theatrical technique. Their one claim, truthfulness, is sufficient unto its terrible self.

Hodak's title character, Marija, is a Croatian painter who must decide how (maybe whether) to go on with her postwar life. There are other characters — her doctor (Jane Paradise) and her daughter (Elizabeth Birkenmeier), both well-played. But the play belongs to Marija.

She's never off-stage, and she's got to cover harsh emotional territory. That demands a performer of substance and nuance; Boehm was lucky enough to cast Linda Kennedy.

Kennedy, well-known to theatergoers here for years of work with the St. Louis Black Repertory Company, delivers a thoughtful, well-modulated performance. If you want to discover how color-blind casting can pay off, this is the play to see.

The play lives in her voice — rolling, low, punctuated with old songs and lulling stories, variously gasping or firm or choked. Obviously, Nina H. Antoljak's English translation is vital for the St. Louis audience, but Kennedy excels in language beyond meaning — a language of pitch, cadence and tone. It's crystal-clear.

Kennedy is close to the audience in the small theater and not always as well lighted as we might like. But her voice is so strong, and the music, by Farshid Soltanshahi, is so evocative, that the play acquires a curiously nonvisual force. "Marija's Pictures" could make an effective radio play.

In that case, though, we would miss the final lovely, wordless gesture, when Marija chooses life. Is it too much to hope that when she wrote that last scene, Hodak still told us the truth?

jnewmark@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8243