Stage Review : An American Primitive : Leachman As ‘Grandma Moses’

Peppy old ladies can be a trial on the stage, and Cloris Leachman’s Grandma Moses probably does get a bit too adorable at times. But in general she is the goods.

It helps that we first see her before she got to be an institution. “Grandma Moses--An American Primitive” (through Sunday at the Norris Theatre in Palos Verdes) even provides a flashback to her as a little girl.

She is being boosted into a tree by her big brother (Peter Thoemke--he also plays her father, husband, hired man and patron). She is sure that she’s going to fall and get into trouble, but she is determined to see the view from the top. And once she does, she finds her balance.

This hunger to measure the world is the ground-note in Leachman’s performance, linking the little girl, the middle-aged farm wife and the old lady. At all points, she had the eye of an artist. “Now that,” she’ll say, eyeing a fabric sample, “is what I call a true red .” It’s as if she could taste it.

Towards the end of the evening, she recommends a faith in “the unexpected.” It certainly worked for her. Who would have thought that an 80-year-old woman would become a famous “primitive” painter? (She’s not crazy about the adjective.)

Still--what I hadn’t realized--Anna Mary Roberston Moses had painted from her childhood. She just never had time to concentrate on it, what with the children (10, five dead in infancy) and the farm. Finally there was time and she got down to it.

Stephen Pouliot calls his script a play, but it’s really a visit, sometimes rather contrived, with an interesting woman at two different stages of her life. In the first act, set in 1905, her husband (Thoemke catches his strength and his shyness) has decided that they’re selling their Southern farm and moving back to the North--a decision that almost takes the wind out of her sails.

Leachman bustles around packing, and one can feel both the pressures of farm life and the pleasure that she and her husband still take in having their own place, after 15 years as a hired girl and hired man. We also observe the health of their marriage, which progressed from the liking stage to the loving stage, in the old-fashioned way. “I did develop quite a feeling for him,” Leachman smiles, and that’s all she needs to say about that.

Act Two is the Grandma Moses we came to see. Still, there’s a little gasp (there was on Tuesday night anyway) when this old

lady in an apron comes out. Just as with the flashback to the little girl balancing in the tree, Leachman masters the physical image so well that the viewer feels what it might be like to live

in this body--the step firm, but planned out, as is necessary at 85.

Rather than “indicating” old age, Leachman imagines old age, and therefore avoids its cliches. For instance, although Grandma doesn’t appreciate having had to slow down--this was a woman who rather enjoyed being run off her feet--she takes full advantage of the authority that comes with age.

In her interviews with Dr. Otto Kallir, her patron, she makes him play to her tempo. And some of his suggestions about her work are greeted with a significant silence. It is pleasant to be famous, but painting is still something she does for her own pleasure, and if she prefers to paint on Masonite than canvas, well, that’s her process.

“Be cautious about strangers,” she warns her would-be mentor, and it’s the nicest possible way of reminding him that he’s not in her heart of hearts, just yet. Leachman’s Grandma Moses has been around too long to be awed by anybody, yet maintains her taste for birthday cake, and it’s a combination to enjoy.

The evening’s problems come with the territory of the one or two-person show. Too much exposition, too many props. Too much recorded music, too, for my taste; and the slides of Grandma Moses’s paintings look faded. No matter. Her independence, her intelligence and her strength come through.

Plays Tuesday-Thursday at 8 p.m., Friday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30 and 7 p.m. Closes Sunday. Tickets $19- $25. Crossfield Drive at Indian Peak Road, Palos Verdes. 213/544-0403. ‘GRANDMA MOSES--AN AMERICAN PRIMITIVE’

Stephen Pouliot’s play, at the Norris Theatre, Palos Verdes. Presented by the Ordway Musical Theatre, St. Paul. Producers Palm Tree Productions and Bob Banner Associates. Executive producers Dennis A. Babcock and Bob Banner. Director Howard Dullin. Set Michael C. Beery. Lighting Duane Schuler. Costumes and makeup Stephanie Schoelzel. Projections and sound Tony Imparato. Stage manager Ken Heer. With Cloris Leachman and Peter Thoemke.