Donald Margulies’ “Collected Stories” works up to its firestorm of a final scene slowly and carefully.
The play begins, amusingly, when a gawky young creative writing student arrives for a tutorial at the home of a respected short story writer and teacher. The girl, Lisa, is naive in many ways, but Ruth, the older woman of experience, sees she has a raw talent and takes her on as an assistant. We know from Lisa’s writings that she has had an unhappy family life, and Ruth now becomes mother, teacher, confidante and support system.
But as the years go by, in the subsequent scenes of his two-character drama, Margulies shows how this relationship changes. Lisa becomes not only a valuable assistant but a budding writer, as well, and before long, in between arranging Ruth’s life, she is striking out on her own.
This shift in dependency is at first a bittersweet experience for Ruth, who envies Lisa’s youth and ambition. But the relationship turns completely sour when Lisa, afraid that she will run out of material in recycling her own life for short stories, publishes a first novel based on Ruth’s private reminiscences.
Ruth, old and ill, lashes out at the now sleek and confident Lisa, accusing her of stealing her life and her stories–and, worse yet, of writing a poor novel. Lisa, on the other hand, insists she simply grasped, as any good writer would, the opportunity to use someone else’s life history for her own purposes.
This climactic scene, written so that we see and understand the literary and moral positions of both women, is powerful material, with Margulies’ strong command of language and acted by Roslyn Alexander’s Ruth and Jessica Young’s Lisa with a passion that leaves both women drained and abandoned.
In its Midwest premiere at the Organic Theater, under Ina Marlowe’s direction, the production has some problems. Alexander portrays delicacy and vulnerability most convincingly, but saltiness is not something that comes easily for her on stage, and she has trouble creating the earthy, hard-bitten side of Ruth. Young, meanwhile, doesn’t change enough in either voice or physical appearance as she evolves from awkward acolyte to ambitious, driven writer.
Still, the play’s conflict between age and youth and between artists’ rights and their moral obligations is eloquently presented.
This is, among other things, a story about the creative process, and Margulies is not afraid to use names and terms specific to the literary and arts world. Woody Allen, Saul Bellow and the late Delmore Schwartz all play a part in the dialogue.
It’s rewarding, and unusual, to see a drama of ideas so thoroughly and compellingly realized through its characters.
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“Collected Stories”
When: Through April 18
Where: Organic Theater, 2851 N. Halsted St.
Phone: 773-404-4700
