‘Grace’ impresses despite script Actress Vaughn drives Belfast production

At the opening of the two-woman play “Grace and Glorie,” Grace Stiles, a 90-year-old cancer patient, has been sent home from the hospital to die at her family’s farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. She is bedridden, and her only relative, a grandson, is inattentive. Grace has her faith and her knitting, but it is Glorie, a hospice volunteer, who makes the old woman consider her life with new hope even as she is dying.

Tom Ziegler’s bittersweet comedy, playing through next month at The Playhouse in Belfast, is a chick-lit variation on the odd-couple, city mouse-country mouse theme. Grace and Glorie have something to teach each other about what they do not – and eventually do – have in common. Their biggest connection is experience with death. Grace buried all five of her sons and her husband, and Glorie carries the guilt of driving the car when an accident took her only son.

Set in a one-room cabin with a wood stove and water pump, the story is both funny and poignant – to a point. Grace, whose character is the best written of the two, is filled with humorous witticisms, and it’s easy to laugh at Glorie’s cluelessness about the rural world.

But Ziegler’s 1996 script, which has been produced off-Broadway and adapted for TV, is often contrived, such as when Glorie, a worldly woman and overachiever, doesn’t know that covering a pot of water makes it boil faster. The plot is quite predictable – you won’t have to guess where any of the scenes are going, whether you’re hearing the bulldozer razing the apple orchard outside or the mousetrap clipping its newest victim under the sink.

By the end of the two-and-a-half hour production, the telegraphed themes of city vs. country, farm vs. condo, native smarts vs. academics, God vs. self-determination, and old vs. young become annoyingly transparent. Grace’s motto – stay busy and don’t think too much – and Glorie’s twisted sense of ultimate accomplishment – a corporate job, a rich husband and an affair with a hunk – have their own cloying effect.

Yet this production, directed by Mary Weaver, has a component so compelling that it’s impossible to focus solely on the inelegant writing. In an act of truly amazing grace, Gussie Vaughn, Belfast’s resident storyteller, elevates the script with a stunning depiction of the old woman. Vaughn, assisted by Diane Coller Wilson’s subtle makeup design, so completely embodies Grace’s backwoods philosophy and recollections that she truly carries the show. Vaughn infuses her character with strength and dignity. Her Grace is ornery but powerful, a compelling figure whose heart and soul are filled with the music and gumption of the land.

Phil Prince’s cluttered cabin design and mountain and gospel music accompaniment add authenticity to the setting.

Weaver, best known for her work in children’s theater in Belfast, stepped into the role of Glorie at the last minute. And it shows. But the role is poorly written and, even with time, Weaver, who has great energy and sparkle, may not be able to save it.

For anyone who has ever been at the deathbed of an aged person, “Grace and Glorie” will hold special meaning. The outcome is inevitable, but this show is finally a comedy with a sisterhood-is-powerful ending that may pull at more than a few heartstrings.

The Playhouse will present “Grace and Glorie” at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and at 6 p.m. Sunday through Aug. 22, and 8 p.m. Sept. 2-5 at 107 Church St. in Belfast. For tickets or information, call 338-5777. Alicia Anstead can be reached at 990-8266 and aanstead@bangordailynews.net.