(Photo by Suzanne Plunkett)
An epistolary novel, a story told in letters—or “snail mail” for my millennials—is an especially gnarly beast to dramatize because of the unique romantic confidence a letter carries. Spoken dialogue derived from a parcel of letters is often grossly descriptive and much too deliberate to achieve any real surprise—having the editorial advantage of the writer’s retrospect. What you arrive at is a smattering of characters more concerned with an eloquent retelling of their past than alive within their murky present. And the present is the theater’s meat and potatoes. These oft-seen woes are the insurmountable flaws facing Robert Kauzlaric’s world-premiere adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ “The Woman In White” at Lifeline Theatre.
“The Woman in White” was originally published in 1859 episodically over the course of that year and, I imagine, in installments is the ideal manner for this labyrinthine mystery to be ingested. For Kauzlaric’s adaptation is three exhausting hours of non-stop exposition, affording an infinitesimal amount of time to reflect on the impact of the preceding events. And there is an encyclopedia volume’s worth of events to reflect upon.
Some are simple, easily understood incidents like shocking illnesses and deaths, but others are far more obscure parlor-scene-resembling scenes discussing legality, parentage—Victorians do love an orphan—and other past occurrences long forgotten. The result is what I imagine a seventeenth season of “Downton Abbey” to look like. Extremely well-costumed (Aly Renee Amidei) Britons reaching, with strained effort, at sensationalism, while procuring recycled aristocratic quips from a collector Dame Maggie Smith figurine.
