Crimes of the Heart

2008 season · Production archive

The scene is Hazlehurst, Mississippi, where the three Magrath sisters have gathered to await news of the family patriarch, their grandfather, who is living out his last hours in the local hospital. Lenny, the oldest, is unmarried at thirty and facing diminishing marital prospects; Meg, the middle sister, who quickly outgrew Hazlehurst, is back after a failed singing career on the West Coast; while Babe, the youngest, is out on bail after having shot her husband in the stomach. Their troubles, grave and yet somehow hilarious, are highlighted by their priggish cousin Chick and by the awkward young lawyer who tries to keep Babe out of jail while helpless not to fall in love with her.

Written by

Beth Henley

Directed by

Terry Dodd

Ran

April 17 – May 17, 2008

Cast

Brian J. Brooks · Emily Paton Davies · Laura Norman · Susan Scott · Nils Swanson · Megan Van De Hey

About the production

Henley’s play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1981 before it had opened on Broadway, and it remains one of the most-produced American plays in the small-house repertory. Everything happens in one kitchen over three days, which is a gift to a theatre with a permanent single set and no room to strike it.

It also gave the Vic one of the strongest ensembles in its archive; the reviews for this production spend more time on casting than on the play. That the house could assemble six actors of that standard for a five-week run says something about Denver’s small-theatre labour market in 2008, which the Colorado Theatre Guild was by then formally recognising through its annual awards.

What the press said

“What keeps this “Heart” beating (is) the undeniable appeal of Henley’s three beleaguered, damaged Magrath sisters…There’s nuance and exactitude in every unscripted word…the Victorian Playhouse’s effective and affecting staging is very well-cast. ★★★”

“Beth Henley’s script has an unexpectedness and deadpan humor that keep you absorbed, laughing and empathetic…So talented are the women who play the Magrath sisters that I really couldn’t tell if Henley’s play had stood the test of time far more brilliantly than I’d have expected, or if it simply seemed wonderful because the performances were so rich.”

Where it sat in the season

It was production 4 of 10 in the Vic’s 2008 season. It followed Selggin and the Battle of the Mollinduffs (Mar 1 – Apr 5, 2008) and was followed by Catch Me If You Can (Jun 16 – Jul 12, 2008). The full year is set out on the season calendars page, and every production the theatre staged between 2005 and 2011 is indexed in the production archive.

The house’s standard pattern was Friday and Saturday evenings at 7.30 with a Sunday matinee, over a run of six to eight weeks. With seventy-five seats, a full eight-week run put roughly 1,800 people through the room — which a 500-seat theatre does in four nights, and which is the single fact that explains most of what the Vic chose to programme.

---

This page is part of the production archive of the Denver Victorian Playhouse, a seventy-five-seat theatre in the basement of a northwest Denver house that staged its last performance in 2011. Details here are restored from the theatre’s own records as they were published at the time; press quotations are reproduced with their original attributions and nothing has been added to them.