Kate Rylie, Blair Sams and Jennifer Lyon as three sisters in Crimes of the Heart.  Photo by Henry DiRocco.

When Life Hands Them Lemons, They Make Lemonade

by Kimberly Colburn

Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best American Play, after winning a new American play contest at Actors Theatre of Louisville. In 1986 it was made into a movie starring Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek and was nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for Henley for Best Adapted Screenplay. It has been produced countless times at theatres across the country and around the world since its first production, and has quickly become a modern classic.

But forget the awards and accolades. Crimes of the Heart endures not because of its history, but because of its heartwarming appeal. The play is set in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, in 1974, and centers on sisters Lenny, Babe and Meg. They’ve been drawn back to Ol’ Grandaddy’s house where they stir up old resentments, hilarious hijinks and plenty of lemonade.

It’s not your everyday reunion for the sisters, however. They’re drawn together because it’s the day after Babe shot her husband, and she’s refusing to say why she did it. It is also Lenny’s birthday—not that her sisters remembered—and she finds out her childhood horse was struck by lightning. Meg sweeps into town from her failed singing career out in Hollywood and a recent nervous breakdown. Even on a bad day like this one, the sisters manage to find a way to laugh through the pain.

The sisters must also contend with other zany characters in their life. Pesky cousin Chick is obsessed with the reputation of the family. She frets more about the headlines Babe is garnering in the local paper than her defense and calls Meg “cheap Christmas trash.” Doc, the man Meg left behind, is now married but is enticed when he hears of her arrival in town. Since Babe shot the best lawyer in town (her husband Zackery), she’s being represented by the young Barnette, who is motivated by a personal vendetta against Zackery and an outsized crush on Babe. The eccentricities of the characters are balanced by the truth in their actions—these feel like real people, no matter what crazy things are happening around them. The rich Southern setting and amusing idioms add to the entertainment.

Meg, Babe and Lenny just need to muddle their way through it with their wacky kind of grace and more than a little bit of gumption. The turmoil in the sisters’ individual lives is swept open anew by Babe’s actions and the sisters gathering together has the force of Hurricane Camille, which swept through Mississippi five years before. In the end, it’s really your family that you can count on—to make you laugh as much as cry.

Full of heart and humor, Crimes of the Heart will have you leaving the theatre with the faintest hint of a Southern drawl.

About the Cast and Creative Team

Beth Henley.

Playwright Beth Henley is no stranger to SCR. The theatre produced its first Henley play, The Debutante Ball, in its 1984-1985 season. In 1989, SCR mounted the world premiere of Abundance. In 2002, her play Exposed was part of the Pacific Playwrights Festival (PPF). In 2005, Ridiculous Fraud was part of PPF, followed by the West Coast premiere production in the 2006 season.

Crimes of the Heart was the first full length play that Henley wrote, while she was in LA pursuing an acting career. A friend encouraged her to submit it to the Actors Theatre of Louisville for their new American play contest, where it was produced as a co-winner. The Pulitzer Prize and a Broadway production soon followed, before Henley had truly decided to pursue a career in writing. She said afterwards, “When you have a Pulitzer Prize for a play you get other jobs, and you sort of have to believe you’re a writer, which up until that point I wasn’t even sure I was.”

Born in Jackson, Mississippi, Henley set many of her early plays in the South. Filled with eccentric characters, irony, and unusual plot twists, her work is sometimes called “Southern Gothic” because of the way Henley mines rich veins of humor in an otherwise unhappy, even tragic situation. After seeing the first production of Crimes of the Heart, Henley commented, “I was really amazed at how funny it was to people. I just think it’s the way your mind works. Coming from the South, people didn’t have much patience with you embracing your own pain, groveling in it.”

It has been 30 years since Crimes of the Heart was first produced. At the twentieth anniversary of the first production, Henley said “sometimes it feels like it’s been 50 years, and sometimes it feels like it’s been two days. Time is the most fascinating thing to me: It’s liquid and relative and makes no sense whatsoever. I’m just happy to be alive, and happy that someone is still interested in doing the play.”

Warner Shook.

This production is led by director Warner Shook, who has previously delighted SCR audiences with Beyond Therapy, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, The Circle, You Can't Take it With You, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Born Yesterday. He has directed on Broadway and all over the country and spent seven years as the artistic head of Seattle’s Intiman Theatre.

SCR audiences couldn’t have asked for a better match than Warner Shook directing Crimes of the Heart. The Alabama-bred Shook is certainly familiar with the South and its culture, and has directed a large number of plays known for their great roles for women. In a 2004 interview, Shook admitted, “someone once called me the George Cukor of regional theater,” comparing him to one of Hollywood's legendary directors of so-called "women's pictures."

The sisters he’ll be directing include Jennifer Lyon as Meg, Kate Rylie as Babe, and Blair Sams as Lenny. Jennifer Lyon was previously seen on SCR stages in Born Yesterday, directed by Shook, and Noises Off—which won her the Best Actress of 2009 award from OC Weekly. Kate Rylie shone in SCR’s production of Goldfish last year. Blair Sams has also worked with Shook at SCR—with fellow Crimes of the Heart cast member Nathan Baesel (Doc)—in The Last Night of Ballyhoo. SCR veterans Kasey Mahaffy (Barnette) and Tessa Auberjonois (Chick) round out the stellar cast.

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