By
Shaun Clayton
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Pulitzer-winning play opens Sunday at Lab Theater
Crimes are happening at the UA Laboratory Theatre, but not the kind that will wind up in Police Beat.
Instead, the crimes at hand are contained within a play, "Crimes of the Heart," which opens Sunday.
This dark comedy follows a 24-hour period in which three quirky sisters are united when they gather together at the youngest sister's house during a family crisis. They catch up on lost time, get into fights over long-held grudges and try to understand their mother's suicide, which took place years earlier.
Directing the play is Marsha Bagwell, a University of Arizona theater arts assistant instructor. Her 30 years of experience in the theater field, spent mostly in New York City, contributed to Bagwell's desire to direct "Crimes of the Heart."
"I'm a sentimentalist I think - I like to go for that heart kind of play," she said. "I like to see the main character find some kind of enlightenment. Otherwise, I don't think you're getting what you paid for."
"Crimes of the Heart" actually reflects a real-life event. Beth Henley, a playwright and screenwriter from Mississippi, wrote the play in 1979 during a time when she was struggling to become a successful playwright in Los Angeles. Henley based much of the play on a real-life incident in which her grandfather disappeared while horseback riding in the woods near his home.
Henley and her sisters then had to come together as a family to deal with the disappearance, which turned out happily when the grandfather was found unharmed.
"That is what she wrote the play about," Bagwell said, "Coming together because one person in the family needs everybody in the family."
In 1979, "Crimes of the Heart" went on to share the win for the Great American Play Contest sponsored by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. "Crimes" then won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1981, making Henley the first woman in 23 years to win a Pulitzer for drama.
The set for "Crimes" mimics a 1970s-style house. The set also has '70s- era working appliances, real food, running water and even a newspaper from the exact date the play takes place.
"As an actor playing a character, it's like a dream come true because it feels so naturalistic," said Sarah Fleming, a musical theater senior who plays Lenny McGrath, one of the older sisters in the play. "It is as if everyone is going to be in our kitchen with us. It makes the whole thing feel very intimate."
