Philly Fringe 2018: IRC’s ‘The Eccentricities of a Nightingale’

Credit for much of the production’s success belongs to Tina Brock, doing yeoman’s work as director, co-designer (with Erica Hoelscher, who also did the costumes), and leading lady. Her work is superlative across the board, though she deserves special praise for rendering the quirky, Southern Gothic-infused fictional town of Glorious Hill, Mississippi, with such panache.

Capturing the currents

Williams intimately understood the mechanisms of small Delta towns like Glorious Hill, where surface-level respectability cloaks a barely hidden seediness. He also knew they contained an array of characters chafing against the roles assigned them by society — because he had been one of them. He infuses Alma Winemiller (Brock), the play’s brilliant and troubled heroine, with equal parts irascible spirit and unending anxiety.

Brock grounds her performance in this duality. Her Alma often seems to perform the nervous behavior her neighbors expect of her, whirling around the village square in fits of excitement, courting the other townsfolk to look at her. She knows her place in this world — singing teacher, minister’s daughter, rapidly aging spinster — and allows herself to play it.

But there are moments in Brock’s performance that suggest Alma’s deep psychological dread is no act. These mostly come through encounters with Dr. John Buchanan (John Zak, doing wonderful, intricately detailed work), literally the boy next door, for whom she’s pined all her life. When she invites her would-be beau to a literary salon at her father’s rectory, she flutters with endearing nervousness. When she later bursts into his parlor complaining of heart palpitations, the gasping fear in her voice chills.

Age appropriate

Both Brock and Zak are older than usual for their roles, and the casting choice pays dividends. Rather than seeming like a rakish playboy, John comes across here as a cautious and compassionate man who knows his own mind and knows what he wants. (It’s not Alma). Williams’s revision smartly excises Rosa Gonzales, the Mexican girl John impulsively takes up with to get away from Alma, a character too mired in stereotype for modern comfort.

An aged-up Alma gives a greater sense of the sacrifices she’s made to fulfill her duties, both to her own family and to a Southern culture that unfairly expects conformity and feminine perfection from women. Brock also shows the anger that underpins it. She’s keenly aware of her years spent watching the parade pass her by, and she knows that John’s rejection signals the end of a certain kind of hope. It also makes Alma’s decision, in the play’s final scene, to traverse the boundaries imposed on her all the more thrilling.

Phenomenal work extends into the supporting cast, with particularly strong contributions from Jane Moore (as Alma’s hysterically febrile mother, another woman likely lost to the demands of polite society) and Carol Florence (as Mrs. Buchanan, who observes that “every woman is a tiger when her son’s happiness is threatened”). Kassy Bradford, Jimmy Guckin, Carlos Forbes, and Bob Schmidt fill out a host of small roles with great verve; they also provide engaging musical interludes during transitions. Only Tomas Dura, as Reverend Winemiller, seems unsteady in his characterization.

For the second year in a row, IRC is ensconced in the Bethany Mission Gallery, a shrine to American outsider art. Amid walls festooned with incongruous oddities, Brock and her fabulous team give voice to Williams’s ultimate outsider.