Review: Gripping adaptation of 'The Handmaid's Tale'

It was a funny thing to watch Margaret Atwood's classic (since 1985) novel The Handmaid's Tale, as adapted by Joseph Stollenwerk, on Curio Theatre's stage last week. After all, Texas just announced it would end Medicaid contracts to Planned Parenthood, then followed up by raiding the state's clinics. It was the same week a congressional panel of mostly white men grilled Hillary Clinton in a manner reminiscent of its previous interruptathon aimed at Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards.

Race, gender, and reproductive rights matter in this context (as the story's heroine, Offred, notes, "Context is all"). Atwood's dystopia, a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, feeds the needs of certain highly placed white men. Lucky women who prove useful are married to men, cook and clean for men (or are assigned as cooks and maids), and if they can't bear their own children, assist their husbands in impregnating a fertile handmaid assigned by the state. Medical care is limited to birthing assistance, so long as it requires only other women's chanting encouragement and some clean water.

Stollenwerk's adaptation pares the tale to its core, presenting it as a one-woman play in two acts. Paul Kuhn's set nods at the script's omission of the novel's final chapter - an academic presentation - by lining the theater's entrance with artifacts behind glass, such as a handmaid's characteristic red robe and carved wooden signs depicting a cut of meat (women also weren't allowed to read).

Directed by M. Craig Getting, Isa St. Clair's Offred (the Handmaid), keeps the story gripping. Her eyes liquid, she slips into other characters, but never too far, as though protecting herself. There's a moment when she recalls her abducted daughter, cradling her arms around the air. As the memory slips away, we can practically feel it dissipate. A Curio regular, St. Clair previously played Othello's Desdemona; here, she's just as vulnerable and powerful with an unsettling resolve, and she layers the Handmaid's emotions, careful to reveal just enough at a safe pace.

Kuhn's main stage rests on a turntable. On one side, there's a set of stairs with open space before and beneath them. The other side is draped with white cloth, allowing St. Clair to perform in shadow. It's almost monastic. But perhaps the most haunting visual element of this production is built in: Curio performs in an old church, and when the show ends and lights cut out, a stained-glass window glows, revealing a robed Jesus, arms outstretched. Is he protecting or pleading? Context is all.

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The Handmaid's Tale

Presented by Curio Theater Company at Calvary Center for Culture and Community, 4740 Baltimore Ave., through Nov. 13.

Tickets: $15-$25.

Information: 215-525-1350 or www.CurioTheatre.org.

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