My Name is Lucy Barton: and she has her story to tell
23 Oct 2024 - Photos by Dahlia Katz

All life amazes me

Lucy Barton tells us repeatedly that an unnamed writer who she admires, taught her during a workshop that everyone has one story to tell. The difficulty is in finding it then telling it truthfully. Lucy Barton is going to try to tell us hers. Her story begins with a hospital stay of nine weeks caused by complications following an appendectomy. Lucy is an eternal optimist. Though confined to her room, she watches from the window and admires, envies, the women who are walking in the sunshine on the sidewalks of New York City. She vows that when she is released she will never again take a sunny day for granted. And she tells us that, from that day on, she never did. Lucy's story is inextricably bound with a visit from her somewhat estranged mother, who has come from Lucy's rural Illinois childhood home to sit at the foot of Lucy's hospital bed. Lucy's narrative fractures and digresses as the two women trade memories and secrets, and continue to conceal secrets. A surprising number of the stories involve women who leave their husbands and then suffer terrible fates.

As the stories unravel in that timeless way of sharing memories, it becomes clear that Lucy's optimism is hard won. Her childhood was full of events that were horrific but which are still shrouded in a haze of repression, denial or contradictory clear-eyed acceptance. There are words that Lucy cannot bring herself to utter, and much that her mother refuses to admit. It is rural gothic filtered through a nostalgic sepia lens and that paradox is central to My Name is Lucy Barton's power. The ambiguity is mesmerizing and frightening with the two women struggling to tell each other the truth, to apologize, to accept, to accuse. The stories range from the delightful and comic to gut-wrenching and what is unexplained is as potent as what is laid bare. Adapted by Rona Munro from an acclaimed novel by Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton betrays its literary roots. Lucy is telling us as much as she can but so much more lurks unspoken on the pages, in the subtext.

From the moment Maev Beaty (Letters From Max, Little Menace, Bunny, Orlando) strolls casually on stage, she owns the stage. With only a hospital bed, a chair and a magazine to assist, Beaty narrates through the fourth wall, creates a fragile and ferocious Lucy Barton, and transforms into the irascible and frequently, hilariously, salty mother. If it was not done with such consummate skill and sincerity, it would be a theatrical tour de force stunt. Beaty never lets the audience's attention lag, she overlaps thoughts and waits for us to catch up, clearly delineates the characters until they are defined enough to exist as separate entities, and slowly builds emotionally to a startling intensity that is heart wrenching yet utterly natural. It is an extraordinary performance. When she mentions in passing that "lonely was the first flavour of my life," the line resonates in context, as a tragedy, and with all the aching import that Beaty imbues it with. With all that we aren't being told, that Lucy just can't bring herself to tell us.

Beaty and director Jackie Maxwell (Infinite Life, Withrow Park, London Road) have deep dived into the text in order to create a seamless naturalism in Beaty's performance. It is aided immensely by a huge looming video screen where projections by Amelia Scott subtly comment on and enhance Lucy's memories. The lighting design by Bonnie Beecher and sonics by Jacob Lin are subtle and delicately precise, except for one spectacular moment that the three scenic elements combine to jolt the audience, and Lucy, out of their reveries. Reality intrudes shockingly. While My Name is Lucy Barton mainly revolves around mother/daughter dynamics with a dash of male redundancy, there is a stark thread featuring a gay mentor, AIDS and crossdressing. Providing an opportunity for another slice of the audience to relate to the traumas infecting Lucy's families. It is spellbinding until there is an attempt to pull all the threads, the magnificently meandering stories, together. An extraneous overused disaster is shoehorned in and My Name is Lucy Barton is denied, except by the sheer force of Beaty's performance, the catharsis it has been building towards. 

My Name is Lucy Barton is a woman searching for her one story, for her truth, and continually avoiding actually telling it. There are more mysterious threads than there are solid events. Instead of wrapping everything up neatly, My Name is Lucy Barton shows just how complicated a life is, how everyone has a story, that no matter how horrible one's past is, the future is full of possibility. Of the chance to walk on a sunny sidewalk and feel how all life amazes.