The Member of the Wedding
Through Sunday, April 29
Visual Art Exchange, Raleigh
It should not be easy to watch a child slowly starve in front of you. It is not easy in Star Pocket Theatre’s production of The Member of the Wedding.
The child is Frankie Addams, a tomboy nearing age thirteen at the start of this harrowing Southern tale. At first, she flutters around like an agitated moth when her older brother and his fiancée return home from the military two days before their wedding. But once they’re gone, an awful emptiness becomes apparent.
No one wants for foodnot with cook and nanny Berenice snapping green beans at the kitchen table. But as Frankie’s obsession with the departed couple grows, she frets over the impression she made, her appearance, and her future. We watch a precocious, creative queer girl starving for familial affection and intimacy, friends who recognize and value her, and artistic stimulation. In her 1950 play, Carson McCullers makes it clear that all these are missing or in very short supply in Frankie’s small town. When she realizes she’s “an unjoined person,” she takes desperate action.
Under Brent Wilson’s direction, this inaugural production from Star Pocket Theatre features cofounder Mackie Raymond’s bedrock performance as Frankie, Joy Bryant’s soulful take on Berenice, and notable supporting work from venerable veteran Warren Keyes. Unfortunately, difficulties common among beginning troupes are equally clear: wooden performances from less seasoned actors, underdeveloped takes from more experienced performers, and gaffes in blocking that rendered the first scene all but unviewable from the right side of the audience, with actors’ backs turned to us on other occasions. But artists always learn much during their first independent production, and I’m eager to see what Star Pocket’s next one looks like.
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