Kathleen Chalfant is Mabel Loomis Todd for the next few weeks in the way Chalfant always blends instantly and inextricably into whatever character she assumes.
Wearing a stylish off-white period dress, she introduces herself by breezing through a door to the smallest of the three 59E59 Theatres spaces. Immediately and with glowing cordiality, she informs the audience (us) that we’re in the Point Breeze Inn on Hog Island, Maine. It’s 1931, and she’s lecturing for the first time in 18 years, following at stroke she suffered in 1913. Once again, she cheerfully announces, she will be lecturing on “The Real Emily Dickinson.” She’ll be doing so as a good friend of Emily Dickinson’s family—and in particular as a bosom chum, she confides, of the reclusive poet herself.
The occasion for the in-person recitation is A Woman of the World, Rebecca Gilman’s take on the very real Mabel Loomis Todd (1856-1932), who did live on her beloved Hog Island and did know the Amherst, Massachusetts Dickinsons. Perhaps, however, she didn’t know them as well as she initially claims. Check that. She did know some of them better than others. For instance, she got to know Emily’s brother, Austin Dickinson, well enough to estrange herself from his wife, Susan.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★ review here.]
Although Chalfant’s Todd claims she will be discussing the real Emily Dickinson, she doesn’t quite get around to that exclusively. The charm and alarm of A Woman of the World is that Todd has a tendency to digress—so much so that the audience at the Point Breeze Inn quickly realizes less will be revealed about the promoted subject than about the speaker.
Todd occasionally addresses her daughter Millicent, who, she indicates, is standing at the back of the room, obscuring herself behind a bookcase. From time to time she’s even chided by the reticent Millicent as she talks about herself, about how she became acquainted with the Dickinsons, about her eventually befriending(?) Emily, about her own father and astronomer husband David, whom, she announces, is hospitalized at the moment. Among any number of additional details of her life, she lets it be known that when she was young she was widely pursued for her beauty.
Gilman—whose most significant previous play may be the bold Northeast campus drama Spinning Into Butter—is writing an economical, yet complex three-dimensional 75-minute character study. At first sighting gregarious and welcoming, Todd slowly shows herself to be not entirely credible, though it’s important to her that whatever she’s saying is believed. That’s whether or not she’s coloring it for effect. She’s uncertain about her standing with the Dickinsons and, in her ambiguity, inserts a few detrimental insinuations. She even finds something ever-so-slightly disparaging to insinuate about Emily.
Extremely important to her is a collection of Dickinson’s poems she is publishing. She’s had them stashed away for some time and is insistent that what’s she’s now done with them (some tidying up, for instance) will be received as the definitive collection—not the collection Dickinson’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, is releasing at just about the same time.
Gilman is clever. She has Todd talk lovingly and persuasively about Hog Island, which she has purchased in its entirely—but for the small parcel of land where Point Breeze Inn is located. She’s devoted to the island’s natural setting. She thrills over every bird and tree. She wants the special place to remain so, a determination that, in these disturbing climate-change days, all but makes her prescient and admirable. (FYI: The Audubon Society now operates the Hog Island Audubon Camp every summer.)
Todd’s beliefs about just who the true Hog Island beneficiaries are—the indigenous flora and fauna—go some way towards disposing audiences to remain in her corner as they leave the digression-filled speech. This is despite audience members perhaps having been put off by her conflicted attitudes as related to Emily and the other Dickinsons.
Prominent in Todd’s corner is Chalfant. Her performance is—no surprise here—flawless under Valentina Fratti’s sensitive direction and with the help of an all-women creative team. Much of the time, she merely sits on a bench that set designer Cate McCrae provides for Todd’s chatty review of her history. She rises when she has statements either especially positive or negative she’s determined to get across. One thing to watch is Chalfant’s use of her hands. Sometimes they seem to be telling the story entirely on their own.
Whether the pleasure of Todd’s company was enjoyed by all back then is up for debate, but there’s no denying the pleasure of Chalfant’s company as she revivifies the formidable Mabel Loomis Todd.
A Woman of the World opened October 30, 2019, at 59E59 and runs through November 17. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
