Despite the unfathomable magnitude of its losses and impact, it’s hard for the Civil War to surprise us any more. Anyone wanting to tell a Civil War story has to find a place in a legacy of images and narratives: Matthew Brady’s photographs, Whitman’s “Drum Taps,” Scarlett and Rhett and Ken Burns—not to mention hundreds of historians who have tried to help us comprehend the horrors and heroism of those years.
Alex Webb’s Amelia, which Renaissance Theaterworks opened this weekend at the Broadway Theatre Center, probably won’t add to the historical insight of that dark time. But Webb knows a good story when he sees it, and a chance for a good role as well. As an actor with the Aquilla Theatre, Webb spent a good part of his career playing multiple roles in that company’s pared-down versions of the classics. Here, he creates a drama that plays to those talents. The story of a woman who travels across the war-ravaged country to find her husband, Amelia uses only two actors: the title role, and a male actor who plays all the supporting roles (Webb himself played that part in Amelia’s first productions).
Webb’s writing has all the earmarks of a play written by an actor versed in Shakespeare and the Greeks. Not that there are a lot of subtleties or subtext in the story, but the people Amelia meets on her journey are big characters who make their mark in economical and intense dramatic moments. Amelia (Cassandra Bissell) makes a big impression from the get go. She’s a free spirit who flouts 19th-century feminine proprieties and pushes gently against the strictures of her Pennsylvania farm life. She finds an obvious soul-mate in Ethan (Reese Madigan), who shocks her by asking her opinion about current political affairs—namely, the threatening storm clouds of war. Ethan joins the Union Army, and goes missing. And Amelia is off on her adventure.
Save the lovely chemistry between Amelia and Ethan, the relationships in Webb’s play are sketched quickly and economically. Director Laura Gordon understands that the story is paramount—both for the anticipated reunion of Amelia and Ethan, and for its whistle stop tour of the people and countryside of the devastated union. Supported by Jason Fassl’s evocative setting and projections, Gordon and her actors spin through Amelia’s epic adventure with an almost balletic grace. Madigan has always been an actor with a powerful presence, but here he shows a brilliant way with a quick characterization drawn with a change in voice and a few telling details. He and Gordon deftly orchestrate the action with a simple fluidity that doesn’t call attention to itself, but is remarkable nonetheless.
The Civil War may be textbook familiar, but Amelia finds something of its essence in a story that captures the personal, very human struggle faced by those whose lives it touched.
