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Amazing Grace
Grace and Glorie, starring Estelle Parsons and Lucie Arnaz (Laura Pels Theatre)
Crustiness is what's good on the outside of a pie; you can expect sweetness on the inside. Parsons' Grace is the crustiest piece of peach pie you ever saw, and very quickly cottons to the fact that Arnaz's Gloria--Glorie, as she calls her--is for personal reasons so strung out about death "that you can't even say the word." It doesn't take Grace (or us) much longer to get to the fact that Gloria, who had everything going for her--career, motherhood, marriage, a casual affair on the side--lost everything in one swoop when her fifteen-year-old son died in her arms after an automobile accident. So the question vis-a-vis those two women in that cabin is--of course, of course--who is buoying up, who is healing whom? Luckily, Ziegler, director Gloria Muzio, and actresses Parsons and Arnaz, skillful professionals all, inject into this all-purpose instructional setup the recurring zing of laughter. Grace has a way with words and ideas: "Lady, I ain't Queen of England, if you want to sit, sit." Gloria, meanwhile, is hilariously inept at any and every ordinary household task, right down to Grace's having to teach her how, yes, to boil water. (When everything in the world goes wrong with the breakfast Gloria is trying to prepare on a wood stove with smoke billowing forth, you might just be reminded of that hilarious kitchen/breakfast scene between Hepburn and Tracy in Woman of the Year.) So what's to quibble? So Grace and Glorie shamelessly lifts from Chekhov the chunk-chunk of machines destroying dying Grace's beloved apple orchard--who cares? We have long since agreed with Gloria that "you're an amazing woman, Grace," only to be flushed with delight when Grace immediately cackles out a stanza from "Amazing Grace." And we both agree with the old girl and ache a little when, somewhat later, she wearily, but with good humor, sighs: "Will you do me a big favor? Please stop helping me." Given the many pleasures of Grace and Glorie, the favor one begs of oneself in the present circumstance is, "Please stop being a drama critic." -- Jerry Tallmer
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