Five large and historic figures are on the Missouri History Museum Lee Auditorium stage these days, taking an interesting and personal look at many things. The theatrical piece, "Voices," by the Freed-Yorick Ensemble, opened last night and will run through Jan. 23; it's reminiscent of the Holy Roman Repertory Company, which often performed on this stage. The actors speak the exact words of their subjects, but the current group has costumes and props, and has memorized their lines, as opposed to HRRC, which read from scripts
"Voices" was conceived and is directed by F. Reed Brown, who spent many years in theater in and around St. Louis and who now is on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Brown also portrays Henry David Thoreau, well-known anti-slavery writer and political gadfly in the days before the Civil War. The other literary figures are post-Civil War poet Emily Dickinson (Siri Bobst), Dutch Holocaust victim and diary author Anne Frank (Lauren Chapman), Harlem Renaissance poet and civil rights activist Langston Hughes (Ron Himes) and early women's rights advocate Helen Keller (Maris Wolff). Each had a specific area of the stage, with a few items that identified the space.
Brown put the authors' words together, providing a slender biography but a good collection of their words, some familiar, some not, to complete a picture of these people. Diane Huling composed some sensitive musical interludes, performed by music director Nathan Jatcko and sung by Jennifer Kelley, JT Ricroft and Kelly Ross.
Brown's choice of writers allows commentary covering about 160 years and five wars, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and World Wars I and II.
Thoreau is perhaps the most well-known and most-often quoted of the group; from his life on Walden Pond in Massachusetts he wrote his abolitionist tracts, spoke of his admiration for the land and for privacy and Reed is first-rate in his interpretation. Himes was a most effective Hughes, writing primarily about life in Harlem and of the African-American experience in the Roaring Twenties. Wolff, a dancer, gave extreme physicality to Keller, who was blind, deaf and mute, but learned to communicate, and the book on her lap, over whose pages she ran her fingers, was a braille text. But there was a great deal of movement, expressing Keller's frustration at being bound inside her body.
Chapman expressed a lot of teen-age girl in her performance as Frank, petulant, angry, loving, sensual, a typical teen-ager in the throes of puberty and adolescence. She was easy to recognize and to understand; her diary demonstrates she was someone wise and understanding far beyond her years.
The only disappointment was Brobst, whose gown was lovely but who was extremely hard to understand, and it's a shame to be unable to hear Dickinson's lyrical writing. Brobst, upstage left, spoke too softly, and too often seemed not to be focusing on the audience. That can be corrected, and all will be well in a piece that could provide an excellent family outing and a lot of discussion afterward.
Voices, by the Freed-Yorick Theatre Ensemble, is on stage at the Lee Auditorium of the Missouri History Society through Jan. 23
—Joe