Alida, a renowned, reclusive author, wants to preserve in words the memories of her lifetime. Hopes for help in saving what she can have sent her to a social agency. Diagnosis received: Alzheimer’s, well underway. Unexpected addition: Beth, a laid-off young agency worker, trying to save a living, seeks a job recording Alida’s words. Both, then, go into their pasts. Alida’s probing dominates, like her treatment of Beth, whom she requires to use a library rather than the internet. She wants Beth to be on time yet not around when not working. Bossy Alida glories in her ability to have succeeded alone, yet knows that can’t continue. Beth begins to open up about herself when she’s forced to leave living with her boyfriend, one of a series with whom she’s sought — unsuccessfully — to find safety and security. In this regard, Brittany Proia’s conflicted Beth will prove to parallel Alida’s Mother (also effectively played by Proia). The drama shifts (too frequently, perhaps, and repetitively) between now and, more often, earlier as Alida reflects on a without-Hansel, with-Gretel fairy tale of a life. Going through an unfriendly forest of life, she spread words, like the little girl did breadcrumbs. These pointed “the way back to something familiar” . . . until . . . a mystery occurred, yet to be revealed. While Beth keeps telling her own story of loss, of using other people to become and exist as herself, Alida glories in never having been in love. She does reveal, though, how as a child she loved and depended on her Mother, who sought many a Prince Charming. She was spurned by a Hollywood Harry she thought fit the role, but her dreams brought her and Alida only to Disneyland. The play becomes a tale of loss and abandonment for both Alida and Beth. Sticky notes posted, worn, and finally raining down become lost words, breadcrumbs that showed directions but were eaten, and finally tree leaves from the forest of the journey of the women’s lives. Though Alida’s autobiographical book gets burned, will there be in the ashes enough words of meaning for today and the future? Will Beth be able to understand and apply them to herself? Urbanite is lucky to have Barbara Redmond, a former professor of the co-founders, as Alida. At every stage of Alida’s life, Redmond abundantly proves how someone who teaches can also “do.” She gives a poignant, multi-leveled, memorable performance. That Britany Proia holds her own in three roles (including briefly a Witch who’s one of the author’s unnecessaries) is no mean achievement. Ryan Finzelber’s lighting not only creates places and moods but supports stage designer John C. Reynolds in projecting a forrest that fills both performers’ and audience’s space in blue. The set is rightly simple, defined by white table and chair and set pieces, like a door and window with box seat, that can be moved to suggest different scenes. Appropriate costumes get easily changed onstage. Sean Ragan’s sound and music haunt the past and help to bring in the present. Director Brendan Ragan has a right to be proud of his achievement. The production stays involving — true to the text of the woman who wrote the play and her two women characters.
