The Belle of Amherst
In The Belle of Amherst, Jennifer King is a world away from the present day college professor she played in Lucky Penny’s “Rapture, Blister, Burn,” but from the feminine mindset and desire to be read and heard, she might as well be right next door.
Her portrayal of Emily Dickinson, in this play at Sonoma Arts Live, is as precious as the poetry of her subject. Off stage King is a radiant, confident woman. But through her practice of the dramatic craft, she transforms into a plain, very young and innocent woman. With just the curve of her brow, or the plaintiveness of her eyes, she brings to the stage the inner life of the nineteenth century poetess with grace and cleverness.
The director chose to present the play in arena style, where the audience is at the same level as the actress. We are literally sitting in the parlour of the home she shares with her taciturn father, a much more attractive sister, and mother who it seems had no regard for her brilliant daughter. She receives guests, and talks about going to parties, but always seems to prefer to be alone. Never lonely.
She addresses the audience as if we are her imaginary friend. We see the inner life of a brilliant woman, an independent mind who passionately wrote illuminating verse about the life she knew, limited though it may have been.
One (wo)man shows and the true test of any actor. Having the complete play be the sole responsibility of one actor can be exhausting, the pressure immense. There is no other character off which to bounce energy, or share the unflinching eye of the spotlight. But you would never know that with King’s performance. She is a natural, cheerful Emily Dickinson. Her eyes are plaintiff, but alive. She prances around her parlour, talking to us, like a teenage girl writing in her diary. We hear her ambition as a writer - the desire that all writers have to be read as well as respected for their craft. We see her pain when Thomas Higginson rejects her submission to the Atlantic Monthly, apparently along with that other lesser poet, Walt Whitman. Apparently, what does Mr. Higginson know?
Though, notably it was that same Thomas Higginson that published her poetry in 1890 when her sister Lavinia found the huge cache of poems after her death.
From what we know about Dickinson, she lived a solitary life. She never married, had few friends, and was considered an eccentric by the other nineteenth century citizens of Amherst, Massachusetts. You definitely get a sense of that in the play. But while she was reclusive, she was not idle. Her poetry is alive with an expressive appreciation for the natural world, moving observations about what it means to be alive, or dead, or religious.
We learn that she had no use for Christianity. When she was at Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary, she says she was the last of the non-believers, and soon after left the seminary to return home. She was an independent mind, and rather than suffer persecution in the puritanical and dogmatic New England town, she chose to remain alone with her thoughts and her words, recording for only herself the world as she saw it.
William Luce’s script gracefully weaves Dickinson’s poetry in with the monologue, almost to the point where you don’t know where one ends and the other begins. So much of the language is rife with incisive questions and spiritual answers that you wonder how a girl who experienced so little could know so much.
I was reminded of another recluse who worshipped nature, who became a literary heavyweight in his own right: Henry David Thoreau. In fact, they were contemporaries, alive at the same time and living very close. Now, Amherst is just an hour and a half drive from Concord, Massachusetts and Walden Pond, where Thoreau lived. Was there something in the air? Why would two people in New England in the 1850’s prefer a solitary, virginal existence, worshiping nature rather than the Christian God like all of those around them? Most likely they never met, but they seem to be kindred spirits. Dickinson wrote, and King says in the play, “I’ve never had to go anywhere to find my paradise, because it lives within.”
It's so unfortunate that I went to the closing performance of this wonderful play. But King is bringing it to Napa Valley College in October. I’ll definitely see it again.
The Belle of Amherst was presented by Sonoma Arts live at the Sonoma Community Center. The show is now closed, but you’ll hear about it from me this fall, for its run at NVC.
John Henry Martin definitely prefers nature to the Christian God. If you do too, let him know at jhm@johnhenrymartin.com.
