The Need For Love and Forgiveness

Bottle Fly

In Jacqueline Goldfiner’s latest play, Ruth and Penny are a recently coupled pair of lesbian lovers. They’ve traveled to Florida’s Everglades to start a business raising bees and selling their special honey. The couple is renting room and board above a ramshackle bar, owned by Rosie and her husband Cal, a hardworking offshore oil rig foreman. They are raising and caring for K, an emotionally disturbed young adult who Rosie and Cal found wandering alone through the swampland. K stutters and can barely speak; but in her beautiful alto, she croons classic love songs from the 30’s and 40’s. Goldfiner’s one-act drama is a sweet story about how we all have a similar need for love and forgiveness.

The play’s structure is pretty straightforward. As we watch Ms. Goldfiner’s tale play out chronologically, we’re gradually reminded how the hot thrill of a new love can eventually cool down and become almost commonplace. While true for Ruth and Penny, this sad fact of life is also reflected in Cal and Rosie’s long, lackluster marriage. Even with K, while she obviously loves and depends upon her foster parents like a child, that love becomes tempered with time. She continually finds new thrills, often by helping tend the bees with the lesbian couple or going for a boat ride with the two young women. As the story continues, we learn more and more about the five characters. But one fact grows ever obvious. We discover that while each of the characters is obviously human and certainly imperfect, and requires others to forgive them, they also have to learn how to forgive themselves.

Sensitively directed by Eileen Dixon, this world premiere drama obviously speaks to everyone connected with the production, from the director to the cast. It will no doubt touch each audience member in their own personal way, as well. The entire cast does a great job of fleshing out their individual roles. This is especially true for Laura Sturm, who plays the feisty but morally conservative Rosie, and Shannon Leigh Webber, portraying the highly-educated but self-doubting Ruth. 

With an efficient Scenic Design by Rose Johnson, and sound Direction by Ms. Dixon, this is a tender little play in a production that loudly shouts its theme of love and forgiveness. Like the humid Everglades heat, this story and its memorable characters will stick with audiences long after they’ve left the theatre.        

Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas

Presented October 20-November 24 by Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr, Chicago.  

Tickets are available in person at the box office or by going to www.RedtwistTheatre.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com