Mildred (Virginia Wall Gruenert) holds her secrets tight in Robyne Parrish’s Tin Church.
Song and story teach us that what a child experiences on a trip to grandmother’s house can go one of two ways. There might be pumpkin pie after a voyage over the river and through the woods. Or, as with the central character in Robyne Parrish’s grim and haunting Tin Church, a nightmare awaits, big and bad as any wolf and capable of swallowing a body whole.
The nature of this nightmare is a family secret, held between Mary (Marguerite Stimpson) and her mother, Mildred (Virginia Wall Gruenert), hidden from Mary’s sisters, Linda and Sue (Christina Perry and Lilly Tobin), and involving the actions of two unseen characters, Mary’s father, Jerry, and Jerry’s mother, referred to only as Grandma Gilbert. The details are slowly and methodically revealed to the audience. Suffice it to say that at a time when Mary was too young to understand what she was witnessing on her visits to Grandma's, she encountered evil.
Lilly Tobin plays Sue, the youngest of three sisters. Photographs by Julie Skarratt.
Mary relates what she has seen to Mildred, who understands all too well, and the news crushes her—well, it is more of a twist than a crush. Rather than confronting or leaving Jerry for what he has done, or for his subsequent abusive behavior, she instead concocts a decades-long revenge that is the play’s other dark secret, spilled out in teaspoons, allowing the audience to discover the scheme without explicitly being shown it.
This is Parrish’s first full-length play, though one that she has tinkered with and expanded over some 17 years. The writing is tight but favors concept over characterization. She serves up scenes in three varieties: dream sequences, letters written aloud, and what she calls “the memory world.” These are flashbacks to family gatherings that leap across years, or repeat, but with, for example, the dialogue spoken by Mildred in one scene delivered by Mary in another. It is at once a clever comment on the nature of memory and the burden of family inheritance.
One standout sequence finds the characters speeding through their lines at full tilt while manically swaying in their rocking chairs, a fleeting memory rushing by. Parrish also has a good ear for detail, invoking chills with descriptions of the pimento cheese sandwiches favored by Grandma Gilbert and the tin church wind-up toy she lets Mary see but not hold. As Mary eerily tells Mildred:
She goes up the stairs and comes back down. And then she lets me look at the tin church. And she sings. She won’t let me wind it up but she sings to me. Her voice isn’t very good. And when you come to pick me up, Daddy watches from the window.
The letter writing scenes reveal the nasty instincts of Mary and Mildred that otherwise remain hidden behind their Southernly façades. Before scratching it out, Mary writes to her cousin Audrey, “I was looking for you all night … which is odd because you were not my favorite cousin.” Before tearing it up, Mildred scrawls to her own mother, “I can’t say I miss the constant nagging and judgmental hogwash that comes out of your mouth.”
“This is Parrish’s first full-length play. ... The writing is tight but favors concept over characterization. ”
The play spirals through time, with Mary zigzagging across a spectrum, from being the scared little girl clutching her stuffed bunny, to the adult who tries to flee her upbringing by moving to New York. The script defines her as “a rock,” which is a good thing, since there is little chance amid all the theatrics to conjure much warmth. Stimpson’s stoic performance pairs well with her character’s hardened soul. After finally, as an adult, getting the chance to wind up the tin church, she can only remark, “Anticlimactic.”
Wall Gruenert looks the part of Mildred, her sagging body, quivering hands and mussed hair sending out red flags aplenty, though her portrayal lacks the grandiosity and mendacity of a character that aspires to a Tennessee Williams’s Big Mama level of passive aggression. Mary’s sisters, in supporting roles, serve as counterpoint, reminders of what Mary escapes, cranking out babies while having to deal hands-on with Mildred and Jerry’s brutal marriage. Perry manages to find a real rage in Linda’s confrontations with Mary, while Tobin brings a quirky charm to Sue, explaining her terrible choice in men by proclaiming, “My picker’s broken.”
Scenic designer Marie Laster manages an effective set on the Chain Theatre’s small stage, evoking Grandma’s house with just the frame of a roof floating upstage, while sound designer Farid Vargas keeps busy with a constant tap, tap, tap of glass on glass, a warning signal for the audience that more wrongdoing is going on than meets the eye.
The Off the Wall production of Tin Church plays through Nov. 23 at the Chain Theatre (312 W. 36th St.). Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Sunday. For tickets and information, visit insideoffthewall.com.
Playwright & Director: Robyne Parrish
Sets: Marie Laster
Lighting: Juliette Louste
Sound: Farid Vargas
