review - THE HEATH - Arizona Theatre Company

by Gil Benbrook 

For the past year, after being forced to shut their doors and cancel their productions in March 2020 just like every other theatre across the country, Arizona Theatre Company has presented an on-going series of virtual theatre readings and conversations. Their latest offering is an audio version of Lauren Gunderson's The Heath, which features the playwright and also well-known actor John Larroquette.

Lauren Gunderson is one of the most produced playwrights in America and has also formed an ongoing working relationship with Sean Daniels, Artistic Director at ATC. The Heath is an autobiographical play about the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, lineage, legacy, metaphors, King Lear, and, most importantly, the relationship between Gunderson and her grandfather, K.D. Martin, who Gunderson calls "PawPaw". Daniels directs the audio version of the play and also directed the world premiere in 2019 by the Merrimack Repertory Theatre.

Over the course of the 90 minute piece, Gunderson analyzes the guilt she felt over the death of her grandfather and searches for a meaning in her relationship with him, even though that relationship was often distant, especially toward the end of his life. She also tries to find a reason as to why they weren't as close, proclaiming perhaps it was because he was "too old, too country, or too religious" for her to have an in-depth conversation with him. She does recall the connection they had with the Braves going to the World Series but also how she was basically too selfish and so self absorbed that she didn't go to his funeral. 

There have been numerous other plays where people look back at, explore and try to understand past strained relationships, so there isn't anything drastically new or revelatory here, but Gunderson does find a way to use her relationship with her grandfather, some similarities in Shakespeare's King Lear, and the connectivity that music provides to form a deeply personal work.

Gunderson is not only a talented playwright but makes for a quite effective performer, especially in basically playing herself. When she tells us how King Lear is a man who loses his mind and saw his madness coming, just like her grandfather, and how the impact of the disease made him a stranger to his family and to her, it's a vivid description and analogy that you can easily understand from her well thought out line delivery. Also, interspersed throughout the play are several songs, some of which Gunderson wrote and provides the banjo accompaniment for all but the final number in this production. These help to provide a variety in the soundscape of the audio recording and also a connection between the two individuals since we are told PawPaw loved the banjo player Earl Scruggs and his partner Lester Flatt, so he would have loved to hear her play the banjo.  She also discovers Scruggs was born 10 miles from her PawPaw. Gunderson's singing voice is sweet, earthy and vibrant.

As Gunderson traces the lineage of her family and discovers things she never knew about her PawPaw, including a trunk of letters he wrote when he was overseas in WWII, she also realizes that perhaps she could write something for him as a way to make amends for her guilt. She sings a song she wrote on the banjo that, in her dream encounter with her grandfather, he states "You wrote that?" in a positively inquisitive way.  

Although it's mainly a supporting role, John Larroquette is commanding as Lear but also personable, heartbreaking and funny as K.D and while you might think it hard for a personal connection to be achieved from performers who you only hear but don't see, Gunderson and Larroquette form a deep bond in this audio adaptation of the play. 

However, as revealing and intimate as the play is, it does meander around a bit at times, with some extraneous information that isn't fully fleshed out or additive to the narrative, though it still succeeds as a personal story about a woman and her grandfather and the guilt that many of us can relate to feeling with older family members we feel less of a connection to, or are embarrassed by, once we grow older.

Shakespeare wrote in detail about the building storm on the heath during King Lear, and Gunderson compares it to the raging storm of Alzheimer's brewing within her grandfather. The use of sound effects during the storm sequence, as well as in a few other moments, provides a wonderful theatrical feeling to the audio recording.

But in the end it is the music that helps her find a bond with her grandfather. In an epilogue she also mentions how her father in law's guitar and her banjo hang next to each other and how her boys see them every day and that she'll insist they learn to play and love them. "A story doesn't end if we keep telling it. How can we keep from singing?" 

CLICK HERE for more information on The Heath, which streams on Arizona Theatre Company's Youtube and Vimeo channels