‘WOMAN’ GETS A WARM RECEPTION IN TORONTO

‘A Woman of Independent Means” is on the road again. Barbara Rush’s one-woman show has just opened in Toronto--to reviews that should take some of the sting out of the ones it received last season in New York.

“One of the winter’s pleasant surprises,” said the Toronto Star. “A narrative tapestry of enormous skill,” said the Globe and Mail. “Rush is a thoroughbred,” said the Sun.

Matthew Fraser of the Globe and Mail admitted having trouble with the early part of Betsy Hailey’s portrait-in-letters about a Texas woman with a will of her own. “The epistolary narrative is stiff at times,” he found, “and as the young Bess, Rush’s performance is slow and spiritless.”

But as the character matured, so did Fraser’s appreciation of Rush’s performance, with the last act striking him as “superb.” In retrospect he liked the gradual quality of the experience. The play seemed to be saying “that life can be viewed fairly only when seen as a whole; at any given point we can know a person only partly.”

Paula Citron in the Star was also pleased. “On the surface, Bess is a wealthy Dallas matron, stiff-lipped and conscious of her role in society. In her letters, however, she emerges as a woman with a vibrant sense of humor who is always willing to give an honest appraisal of herself, warts and all.”

Bob Pennington of the Sun: “The great pleasure in this portrait is its fullness. . . . Rush grows visibly older in walk, posture and aura until you would swear there was a well-preserved and highly articulate 80-year-old looking out from behind those spectacles.”

Lila Sarick in the Willowdale Mirror: “Bess Steed Garner was a delightful and intelligent woman. ‘A Woman of Independent Means’ is an equally delightful and intelligent play.”

Dallas and London may see the play in the future, which brings to mind Arthur Miller’s remarks on receiving an honorary degree at the University of Pennsylvania, as reported in the December Pennsylvania Gazette:

“Our culture has set up a situation where, in effect, every play that is to make a national impression has to come through New York. It may not originate there, but it has to come through there. And when it comes through New York, it has to be reviewed by one man--whoever is writing the review for the New York Times.

“And once (he’s) condemned it, you’re dead.”

Not if you make a fight for it.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK. John Updike in the New Yorker: “Perfectionism is the enemy of creation, as extreme self-solicitude is the enemy of well-being.”