HER ACHING HEART
Bailiwick Repertory
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Her Aching Heart is a send-up of gothic romances. Two contemporary women, Harriet (Sara Nichols) and Molly (Teri Clark), happen to be reading the same cheesy novel at the same time. While they pursue an utterly conventional relationship their literary counterparts–the haughty, willful aristocrat Harriet Hellstone and the simple country maiden Molly Penhallow–plunge into a tortured affair, complete with guilty kisses, foppish male courtiers, and even an occasional sword fight.
It takes a rare imagination to create such exquisitely bad stuff without ever lapsing into cynicism: at no time does Lavery approach her material with a mean spirit. She clearly loves the trashy novels she satirizes, respecting the grand sweep of the passions they contain. And fortunately Lavery has two remarkably flexible and creative actresses, who meet nearly every challenge of the furiously paced script. Nichols and Clark dive into their roles, seemingly on the verge of bursting into hysterics. They play everything with an absolutely straight face, however, even as the audience groans at each new contrivance.
Fundamentally, Patricca’s characters are simply too small for the scope of his play. They’re rather generic, without the depth of humanity needed to bring this highly intellectual work fully to life. Patricca seems aware of this problem at least on some level, for as the play progresses it seems to shrink, until most of the bigger issues have been replaced by a simple relationship drama between Gerry and Josh. The play’s diminished scope seems more in keeping with the characters.
