The Arkansas Repertory Theatre started its 2017-18 season Friday, and the Rep's first-year producing artistic director, John Miller-Stephany, made his directorial debut with a real bang -- though you don't hear it until late in the show.
It's a sure-handed production of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Rebecca Gilman's stage adaptation of Carson McCullers' quintessentially Southern novel, with superb acting and staging and even live incidental music.
Christopher Tester, a principal at the New York Deaf Theater, plays the central role of John Singer, a man of unfailing kindness who shows up in a Georgia mill town populated mostly by misfits at the tail end of the Depression.
Four of them find in him a confidant and guardian angel, telling him troubles, hopes and dreams: Mick Kelly (Madeline Adelle Phillips), a music-loving tomboy growing unevenly into a young woman; Jake Blount (Lou Sumrall), equal parts town drunk and labor agitator; Dr. Copeland (James Foster Jr.), a proudly militant black man ranting against the oppression of his people and the passivity of his children; and slightly ambiguous cafe owner Biff Brannon (Gregory Myhre).
But when troubles roost in Singer's boardinghouse room, whom can he tell?
The 13-member cast is universally superb, though I sometimes found Phillips' upward inflections at the ends of lines a bit grating. Some scenes are so short that transitions make things a little choppy in spots. Mike Nichols' unitary set, which incorporates the cafe, boardinghouse and Dr. Copeland's home, also does duty as a backdrop for projected graffiti and the supertitles that interpret Tester's signing for hearing audiences.
The show continues through Sept. 10 at the Rep, Sixth and Main streets, Little Rock; many performances will be signed, as Friday's was, for the hearing impaired. Ticket information is available by calling (501) 378-0405 or online at TheRep.org.
Metro on 08/26/2017