Review: Skin & Bone

By Wendy Rosenfield

for the Inquirer

There's no doubt Jacqueline Goldfinger's authorial voice rings loud and clear through her tales of Southern misfits.Skin and Bone, the second pitch-black comedy in her planned trilogy about the residents, transients, and dear departed of Transfer, Fla., and a world premiere by Azuka Theatre, brings back some of the sound and fury of Part 1, the terrible girls. But to paraphrase another Southern writer, this time, it signifies less.

A tale of two sisters, the play combines the pathologies and power dynamic of the reclusive women from Grey Gardensor Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle with Martin McDonagh's appreciation for stage gore. While Midge (Maureen Torsney-Weir) and Madge (Drucie McDaniel) still occupy a rundown, Arsenic and Old Lace-style bed-and-breakfast - due to be demolished to make way for a Walmart - into the 1990s, their '90s could easily be any chunk of the early-to-mid-20th century.

Dirk Durossette's set has all the markers of Southern decline: a front porch overtaken by foliage, a Victorian camelback sofa, peeling floral wallpaper, cherrywood end tables, and a huge storage chest covered with an afghan and repurposed as a coffee table. And about that chest - it's really big. Why would two old ladies ever need a chest that big?

I won't give away the play's surprises, though Goldfinger does, too readily and too soon, leaving long, slack scenes during which director Allison Heishman allows Torsney-Weir to get her Tennessee Williams on. She hollers at Nathan Holt's Ronnie DeSoto, a local boy sent by the Walmart developer to clear out the women safely, "What'd your momma do, Ronnie? Dress you in pigtails and a mammy dress when you a child?"

It's fun to watch, sure, if less so later, when things stagnate. McDaniel's dialogue also devolves into little more than filler - a shame, as her timidity and restraint indicate still waters running far deeper than what Goldfinger has given her.

These are missed opportunities, as is a subplot involving Amanda Schoonover's hapless Emma, a vagabond who arrives seeking clues about her past. If the sisters' secrets are revealed too early, Emma's is revealed too late, and a third thread, about a last-minute effort to get the home a historic designation - which could pull Ronnie tighter into the women's net - instead becomes just a decorative stitch.

Still, Goldfinger's awful women are on to something, and while this trilogy chapter isn't as strong as the first, I'm willing to hold out for Part 3. After all, while I wouldn't want to live in Transfer, Fla., it's a compelling place to visit.

Presented by Azuka Theatre at Off-Broad Street Theater at First Baptist Church, 1636 Sansom St., through March 23. Tickets: $20-$25. 215-563-1100 or AzukaTheatre.org.