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Smith's novel makes great theater
The highest compliment I can pay Highlands' Repertory Theatre's ongoing production of Fair and Tender Ladies is to say that it's as good as the book.
It's nowhere near as long as Lee Smith's award-winning 316-page novel, though, which makes Sanford actress Quinn Hawkesworth's stage adaptation all the more amazing.
Hawkesworth, who also stars in the production, takes the audience on a seven-decade journey through the eyes of Ivy Rowe, born at the turn of the 20th century in the hills of Virginia.
Like Smith's novel, Hawkesworth's script is comprised of letters Ivy writes all her life, first to her pen pal and later to her sisters and former teachers. And Hawkesworth manages both to capture Ivy's spirit and retain Smith's poetic language as she tailors Ivy's life to fit a two-hour stage show.
On my way to Asheville, before I sat transfixed by the actress's solo performance, I wondered how such a detailed, richly-textured novel could be condensed into a play.
While watching it, however, I realized Hawkesworth accomplished her objective the same way Cold Mountain's screen writers managed to fit Ada and Inman's tragic story into a 120-minute movie that remained true to that blockbuster novel: They did it by identifying the central thread of the characters' lives and eliminating tangential story lines.
The words Hawkesworth speaks on stage are identical to the ones Smith put in Ivy's mouth when she wrote the novel. It's a masterful job of editing.
Because I love the book so much and have read it so often, I recognized and appreciated that almost every word I heard during the play came straight from the book.
One difference though, is that while Hawkesworth opens and closes the play by singing a verse of the old ballad that's titled like the play (Come all you fair and tender ladies/Be careful how you treat young men...), Smith's novel opens with a selection, Weep Willow, by Cullowhee poet Kay Byer. (“Come down among the willow shade and weep, you fair and tender ladies left to lie alone, the sheets so cold, the nights so long.")
It may be that Byer drew from the ballad to write her haunting poem; in any case, the song fits the show.
It's also interesting to note that the ballad is among the songs featured in Songcatcher, the 2001 movie that credited local musical matriarch Mary Jane Queen as the inspiration for one of the film's main characters.
But enough of the background.
Hawkesworth's performance is riveting. All alone on the stage of the Diana Wortham Theater, Hawkesworth truly is the voice of Ivy Rowe - sassy and impudent as an adolescent, then confident and strong, and, finally, weary but wise. Yet Ivy never loses her sense of humor or her poet's eye.
Ivy's story - beautifully told by Hawkesworth - is still available to theater-goers this weekend. Curtain time is 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, March 11-13; for information, call (828) 257-4530 or check online at www.highlandrep.org.
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