Leslie Abrams is a dog. An infant. And dead.
Abrams is all those and more in Live Theatre Workshop’s production of Christopher Durang’s “Miss Witherspoon.”
Shortly after the play begins, her character, Veronica, commits suicide. She’s fed up with life on earth and is overly concerned that the Skylab that orbited the planet in the 1970s will come crashing down from space and land on her head. She just doesn’t see any reason to go on.
So when she arrives in a place called Bardo, a kind of waiting room for the dead, she is horrified to find that she has to return. Reincarnation, dontcha know.
But she’s going to fight going back. She refuses to return to a place she hated so much she killed herself to get away from it. Maryamma, her Hindu reincarnation guide, has renamed her Miss Witherspoon because her aura is a brown tweed and she’s “like some negative Englishwoman in an Agatha Christie book whom everybody finds bothersome.” But Maryamma is patient. She’ll get her back to the land of the living. And she does: as a newborn furious to discover she’s going to have to learn to talk all over again, a carefree puppy, a newborn again, this time with cruel and drug-addicted parents. Somehow she manages to kill herself in all her lives — except as the dog. She loved that life, but she and a car had an unfortunate accident.
This is not Durang’s strongest script — it doesn’t have the bite or depth of his “The Marriage of Bette and Boo” or “Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All for You.” And while it’s quite funny, it devolves into a too-preachy piece.
Still, director Sabian Trout has shaped a play that moves with a rhythm and clarity.
And then there’s this: Durang’s dark humor was delivered with nuance and gusto by Abrams and her fellow cast members.
Carlisle Ellis’ Maryamma is appropriately annoying (she’s kind of a nag about this reincarnation thing), and Ellis has found the humor in a character with lots of potential to be dull.
Bree Boyd and Drew Kallen-Keck play multiple roles as middle-class parents of a newborn, and the drug-addicted ones of another — those new babes are, of course, Miss Witherspoon. The two made sure each character was distinct. They milked their roles, ensuring the sold-out opening night audience was kept in stitches.
Carley Elizabeth Preston plays a few small roles. She has a powerful stage presence that commands your attention.
But Abrams steals this show. We see her on stage too rarely these days, and “Miss Witherspoon” reminds us that, whether she’s playing a baby, a dog or dead, she is sorely missed.
