Review of “Dear Elizabeth”
Review by Issie Patterson
Photo by Wunderdog Theatre
Sarah Ruhl’s carefully-crafted and poignant “Dear Elizabeth” is an intimate piece for any audience with even a passing appreciation for poetry. Directed by Shelby Bushell, the show is constructed around a back-and-forth of real letters read aloud by Alexis Kellum-Creer as the witty, self-deprecating Elizabeth Bishop and Anthony Santiago as the sometimes arrogant, often intoxicatingly enthusiastic Robert Lowell.
In one of their many correspondences, Bishop summarises her year-long, emotionally complex friendship with fellow Pulitzer-winning poet Lowell, describing beautifully the “intensity of hoping” that he is doing well. The ambiguity of their relationship is a constant source of tension in the script and onstage. As two parts of a pen pal romance, their correspondence would be trite and bland. However, their relationship is built on a foundation of mutual understanding and admiration: they are both genius poets who struggle with solitude, mental health, and creating the art that they know they are capable of creating.
Desite working with a minimal set and imagined boundaries onstage that represent the hundreds, sometimes thousands of miles between them, Kellum-Creer and Santiago make this play feel intimate and real. Certain anachronisms or inconsistencies in the set momentarily distract the audience from the tiny, detailed world onstage: a modern set of headphones, pages that cover the poets’ desks that are visibly scripts, not drafts of poems. However, most of the set details are well thought-out and essential: typewriters, glass bottles of liquor, even some more unexpected, inventive props and set pieces that are used brilliantly to emphasize the content of the letters being exchanged.
The play starts light and slow, as it must, with cordial exchanges and cutesy banter. Such as in this description Bishop offers Lowell of the New England town in which she lives.
“Its heart beats twice a day when the train goes through.”
The most impressive aspect of this performance is how gradually the play moves from airy, friendly back-and-forth to dark, emotional passages, where often one poet falls silent in helplessness, their side of the stage darkening as the correspondence becomes miserably one-sided.
Sound design and music contribute to those rare euphoric moments where Bishop and Lowell are reunited in person. In one particular stunning instance, the two are dancing in ecstacy to swing band music that matches their moods, when Lowell suddenly spins out of control, drunk and disoriented, and the music follows him perfectly.
“Dear Elizabeth” brings to life the loss and loneliness of these two poets, accentuated by frequent lines from their poems both well and lesser-known.
“The art of losing isn’t hard to master,” Bishop quotes from her own work, towards the end of the poets’ many year-long correspondance. When she hesitates, unable to go on, Lowell implores, in a powerful voice shaking with emotion: “Write it.”
Issie Patterson is a writer and musician from Ontario and Nova Scotia. Her original plays have been performed in Halifax and Vancouver.