Books and Music: Little Women
Reflection, appreciation, and praise
My Journey
The past weekend’s odyssey was to the place where my life began—a city called Alexandria, in central Louisiana. In the heart of “CenLa,” as the locals call it, at Rapides General Hospital, a six-pound baby came screaming into the world—with some trepidation, needless to say. Apparently, the physician attending my birth lost his patience with me and used a pair of forceps to get the job done. I had a massive bruise on the side of my head, and many years later, a brain scan revealed a not insignificant concavity. So, suffice it to say, with regard to this Little Woman, it was a tumultuous beginning?
The Book
It was ups and downs for the March women too, but with Marmee’s gentle, time-tested wisdom and Beth’s guiding light, add to that a few well-placed truth bombs from Aunt March, they figured it out.
I do love a good Little Women passage, especially if it illustrates the uniqueness of each March sister. Four Little Women. Four personalities. Four sensibilities. Pretty Meg, dynamic Jo, sweet Beth, and firecracker Amy!
Take, for example, this passage from Chapter 10 of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel:1
The garden had to be put in order, and each sister had a quarter of the little plot to do what she liked with…. Meg’s had roses and heliotrope, myrtle, and a little orange tree in it. Jo’s bed was never alike two seasons, for she was always trying experiments; this year it was to be a plantation of sunflowers, the seeds of which cheerful and aspiring plant were to feed Aunt Cockletop and her family of chicks. Beth had old-fashioned, fragrant flowers in garden—sweet peas and mignonette, larkspur, pinks, pansies, and southernwood, with chickweed for the bird and catnip for the pussies. Amy had a bower in hers—rather small and earwigs, but very pretty to look at—with honeysuckles and morning glories hanging their colored horns and bells in graceful wreaths all over it, tall white lilies, delicate ferns, and as many brilliant, picturesque plants as would consent to blossom there.
Meg had roses. Jo had experiments. Beth had blooms of fragrance and color. Amy had “brilliant, picturesque” plants that really popped! This novel is a classic precisely because it is timeless and universal in its poignance. We can place it in the middle of the American Civil War. We can dress them up in bonnets, gloves, and shawls appropriate to the period. Yet I defy you to show me someone who does not find some reflection in the pages of Little Women—yes, men too, be they husbands or fathers, sons or lovers.
The Play
My cousin Leigh Schneider—who played Aunt March in the Hearn Stage (Kress Theatre) production of the Little Women, the Broadway musical—dedicated her performance to “her Beth,” that is, her baby sister Joan.2
Well, Leigh was my reason to drive to Alexandria and watch the show, but I feel terrible saying that, because the show was fabulous and, as it turns out, there were many good reasons to make the drive—not least of which was to reconnect with uncles and cousins and a whole new generation of the Schneider family.
I have to say, it was somewhat amusing to watch Leigh, seven years my junior, made up and dressed up as an old lady, with a grey wig and a walking stick! There is a picture from the ‘80s of me holding Leigh. Little Woman I was indeed, roughly eight/nine years old, and Leigh, maybe one or two….
Surreal, yes, it was definitely surreal to sit in the audience and watch her sing fantastically and portray cranky Aunt March! Surely it wasn’t just my cousinly bias that felt convinced by the portrayal? Biased, I may be, but I still know talent when I see it.
It was a packed house. The one empty chair you see (behind my uncle Mark, Leigh’s father) was mine, empty so I could take the picture just before the show! (Mark’s brother, my uncle Frank, is seated in the center, straight back, to the top, under the lighting crew—his legs crossed and his iPhone tucked in his shirt pocket!)
But before I get into the show, let me tell you about the set design. Wow! A team of five people—director Kody Walker, Eric Cook, Stephen Osman, Rodney Walker, and Chris McDowell—designed the beautiful, fluid, multifunctional, eminently practical and yet impressively poignant set. Quotes from the novel were written in chalk all over the stage. We had a downstairs—entrance center stage, living area Down Stage Right, Beth’s piano Down Stage Left—and an upstairs decorated as Jo’s attic space, her writing studio. The clever set design extended to the lobby of the Hearn Stage, where pages from Jo’s burnt manuscript decorated the tables.
Jo March was portrayed with guts by Devin Gaudet, whose real-life mother, Charlotte Booth, filled the role magnificently as Marmee March. The program informs that Devin Gaudet “has been performing in CenLa since 2005”3 and that previous, and favorite roles include Shelby in Steel Magnolias, Princess Fiona in Shrek the Musical, and Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Her mother, Charlotte Booth, is a high school math teacher without, surprisingly, any prior experience in theatre. Her voice was powerful, full of emotion, and I thought she deployed the character with natural skill and presence of mind. Devin Gaudet (“Jo”) appeared on Alexandria’s local KALB station to talk about the play.4 As Gaudet said in that interview, this play was “just a classic story… set to music,” a story everyone will be familiar with, whether from reading the book in high school or seeing one of the film adaptations. It was directed by Kody Walker, who, as mentioned already, was involved in the set design and also pulled off a charming Germanic accent to play the role of Professor Bhaer.
Under the musical direction and accompaniment of Ellene Owens, the entire cast delivered a pleasant rendition of harmonies and melodies. In her playbill bio, Owens said she was grateful to director Kody Walker for “inviting her [to be part of the production] and for not making her play in the light booth.”5 As it happened, the lights were handled by Adam Rohoads, while Glenn Leger and Lennox Osman took care of sound.
The Stage Manager was local business owner Amanda Phillips (Tamp and Grind Coffee) whose playbill bio declared: “Her favorite moments include making Meg’s dance card, Beth’s kite, and watching these dazzling actors perform at each rehearsal.”6 Phillips will actually be part of the cast in the next production on the books for the Play On Theatre Company (playontheatrecompany.com)—that will be Murder on the Orient Express, also on Hearn Stage at the Kress Theatre, downtown Alexandria. The run for it will be October 13-16 and Amanda Phillips is set to play the role of Mary Debenham.
I found only one serious flaw overall and that was in the seashore scene with Beth (Alyssa McClain) and Jo. This fault had nothing to do with the actresses, who each performed magnificently with heartfelt emotion. It was rather a slight fault in the stage direction for Beth, who was seated the whole time. There were times when it was difficult to see her face for the way she was turned and the way her hair fell over it. This was a scene of high emotion, centering on the character of Beth, who was dying. I felt that, for the fault in staging, the audience might be left with something wanting in the culmination of Beth’s story. We needed to see her face more. Beth’s spirit is such an essential and indispensable part of the whole story, too, for it is her who makes everyone else stronger. Her spirit is the wind in the sails, the very strength that underpins the story. Even her death in the plot bolsters the growth of every other character, not least the protagonist Jo because, under Beth’s influence, she has begun to live in and to look at the world, no longer as a fanciful-headed girl but as a mature woman. As Beth says in the novel, when we die, we leave the love in our hearts behind, and we take the same love with us too, “for love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.”
My Review
ACTING: 5*
MUSIC & VOICE: 5*
CHOREOGRAPHY: 5*
DIRECTION: 5*
COSTUMES: 5*
SET DESIGN: 5*
Footnotes
Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/514.
Leigh Schneider’s baby sister Joan died far too prematurely in 2014, at the age of ten. Following a brave, two-year battle with bone cancer at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, cousin Joan made the divine crossover. She was renowned for her holy devotion and her wish with the Make a Wish Foundation was to make a pilgrimage with her siblings and father to Rome and attend a papal audience. She truly was a Beth March in the world. A particular quote from Louisa May Alcott that was included on the set walls, about the Beths of the world, strikes me as particularly applicable to the Joans of the world: “There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices til the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.” (Chapter 4, Little Women.)
Playbill for Little Women: The Broadway Musical @ PlayOnTheatreCompany.com.
“Watch the classic story of Little Women this weekend at the Kress Theatre on the Hearn Stage in Alex.” KALB. 28 July 2022. https://www.kalb.com/video/2022/07/28/play-theatre-presents-little-women/.
See Note 3.
See Note 3.