TIME HERALD RECORD

August 2003
Memories lost in the stars in Fringe 'Orion'

PLAY REVIEW: There is nothing nebulous about 'The Great Nebula in Orion,' a clear-cut portrait of two women renewing their friendship from college days with love and regret for the past.
By James F. Cotter
 

Woodstock Fringe is staging "The Great Nebula in Orion," a one-act play by Lanford Wilson with music by Kenneth Fuchs. It involves two college chums who meet by chance in New York City 14 years after graduation and six years since their last meeting. Louise (Laura Green) is an award-winning dress designer, single, attractive and successful, while Carrie (Watson Heintz), from the suburbs of Boston, has married a wealthy man and has beautiful children, with pictures to prove it.

During an October afternoon of brandy drinking in Louise's handsomely furnished apartment, the veneer begins to peel off to reveal unhappy lives with bitter regrets for the past. Both women have lost the true loves of their youth and both feel they have disappointed themselves and their families.

Green has the look and glamour of a New York career woman; she wears her fashion in impeccable good taste. Her smile radiates as she lifts her appealing soprano voice while recalling the great talk and times they shared with their friends in college. Heintz is matronly and richly garbed; you can tell she has come to town for a shopping spree. She, too, has a pleasing soprano that she frequently addresses directly to the audience when she spins out her inner thoughts. She acts out the stages of growing increasingly tipsy without overdoing it.

The metaphor of astronomy is woven into the dialogue with meaningful results. Carrie's poet friend Dick once traced out the figure of Orion with his belt and sword while they lay on a beach in California. But the center of their relationship, like the center of Orion, is just rarefied gas and dust. The memory of what might have been cannot sustain her in the present.

"We're better off than most," Louise tries to console her, but material things cannot make up for personal losses.

In their interaction, the actors are well-directed by Nicola Sheara, who creates a sensitive movement that leads to a telling climax. Michael Conley accompanies the singers on the piano with starlit tones and lyrical trills.

Music heightens the emotional responses and brightens the dialogue between these two articulate friends.