Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley (1981)

TW: Mental Illness, Domestic Violence Mentioned, Sex with a Minor Mentioned

 

SYNOPSIS

            It’s Lenny’s birthday her younger sister Meg has come to town because their youngest sister Babe is out on bail for shooting her husband Zackery and no one remembers to celebrate Lenny, not even their cousin Chick that’s lived near Lenny her whole life. There’s a lot of unpacking in this play mostly stemming from their mother’s suicide when they were girls, big news for a small town in Mississippi. Lenny has spent so much time taking care of other people, namely Old Grandaddy, that she hasn’t got to live any of her own life. Old Grandaddy slips into a coma, Lenny chases Chick out of the house, and finally summons the nerve to pursue a relationship with a man from Memphis. Meg left to pursue a career singing with no luck. She’s the one that found their mother and has sense been obsessed with withstanding all the horrors of the world with numb disinterest only to find out she’s still capable of feeling even after all this time. The biggest story in the play is that Babe’s husband is the biggest lawyer in town that she shot after he caught her having sex with a fifteen year old Black boy. Babe is being defended by a new upstart lawyer that has an unspoken vendetta against her husband and it’s hinted that it’s over his crush on Babe. At the end of the play he’s come up with a way to settle out of court but Zackery has threatened to have Babe committed. Babe tries unsuccessfully to commit suicide but Meg stops her. The plays ends with the girls surrounding Lenny after she’d made a wish on the birthday cake her sisters got for her.

 

CHARACTERS

Lenny Magrath – 30, White, Eldest Sister

Chick Boyle – 29, White, Sisters’ First Cousin

Doc Porter – 30, White, Meg’s Old Boyfriend

Meg Magrath – 27, White, Middle Sister

Babe Botrelle – 24, White, Youngest Sister

Barnette Lloyd – 26, White, Babe’s Lawyer

 

POSSIBLE MONOLOGUES

            Barnette has a sort of monologue when he’s introduced about exactly why he thinks he’s the best man for the job representing Babe against Zackery.

            Babe has better monologues. There’s her first where she explains exactly what led her to shooting her husband that comes at the end of the first act. In the second act she goes into more detail and it can be truly comedic as a stand alone monologue to her a woman go on about how after she shot her husband she made a big pitcher of lemonade going into way too much detail about how she made it and wiped her mouth afterwards. She even offers some to Zackary and when she takes it too him Babe has a hard time understanding that he wants her to call an ambulance. Only at the end does she have the realization that it might make her look bad. Then she has another dramatic one when she realizes why their mother hung her beloved cat with her when she killed herself.

            Meg explains her own psychotic break and how she didn’t come home for Christmas because she was in LA County Hospital’s psychiatric ward. She has another monologue in anther scene after coming home from her date with the married Doc. It’s a very Blanche Devereaux monologue where Meg talks about running away with Doc and pulling him from his wife and half-Yankee children, but he never asks her. She should be devastated but she’s just happy that she can still feel genuine desire.

PERSONAL THOUGHTS

            The only reason the characters in the play need to be white is for a line about Willie Jay, the boy Babe has an affair with. Because he’s Black, Lenny assumes that Babe is a liberal and she instead says she’s always been democratic. Babe also worries that Willie Jay’s involvement would get him into a lot of trouble so Barnette has him move North for protection. If those lines are dropped and his leaving is made to be about his age as opposed to his race then the characters can be played by any ethnicity. This would mean altering the script so take that how you will.

            Regardless, I do enjoy this play even though it feels like it stops short. The girls are happy in the final moments, but for all the talk about Babe’s trial, it feels like the audience would be told if it was actually settled or not. Barnette has a plan but we don’t know for sure that it works, especially since Zackery’s call about sending Babe to a psych ward comes after Barnette decree. It’s clear that Lenny and Charlie from Memphis are a good match and it’s clear that Meg has found her will to sing again, but every time I read the play I want to see Barnette and Babe’s moment where she free and has a chance to return his affections or deny them. Of course the problem is that court cases aren’t settled in the defendant’s grandfather’s kitchen, so the moment was always dead in the water. This is a very Southern play full of comforts and hilarious bickering.