Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, November 30, 1994 TAG: 9412070044
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO BARBARA JOHNSON
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Because after playing the Mother of God, the only direction available to Barbara Johnson would seem to be, uh, down.
On the other hand, the star of this one-woman, one-character play by Charles Turner has done a pretty good job of keeping the role ascendant: "Woman in Light" will be on stage at Virginia Western Community College from Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.
The play, about an imagined conversation between the Virgin and Luke (as in the author of the New Testament text), premiered in Memphis four years ago with Johnson as Mary. She has performed excerpts at various Roanoke venues since.
The veteran actress - who grew up in the city of Elvis, Beale Street and Federal Express - is the only one to appear in the role to date.
"To be perfectly honest," said Turner, the playwright, "I consider it hers."
Johnson moved to Roanoke in 1991 with her husband, Craig (who once played touch football with Elvis).
In addition to her theater work in Memphis, she has appeared in Roanoke productions of ``Steel Magnolias," "Blithe Spirit" and "What Every Woman Knows."
But nothing she has done, Johnson said, has drawn quite the response of her earlier performances of "Woman in Light."
"This is the only one where I got letters and a real personal response from people," Johnson said.
One admirer found her portrayal of the Virgin "not only magnificent artistically but profound spiritually."
"I cannot convey to you how moved [we] were with your portrayal of Mary at the cross," wrote another. "I was drained of energy when you finished ..."
Turner, a Memphis free-lance writer, has known Johnson since she was child. He said he has known of her acting ability since she was in high school.
Still, as he wrote his play the voice he heard speaking the words in his imagination belonged not to Johnson, but to actress Anne Bancroft, Turner said.
He added that the freckled, red-headed Johnson has since staked her claim to "Women In Light" with her performances. At least until Bancroft knocks.
The idea of a play about the Virgin came to Turner when he heard somewhere - he has forgotten just where - that scholars believe Luke got much of his information from interviewing the Galilean's mother. Luke did not know Jesus.
It made sense to Turner.
"The very, very private things that Luke spoke about ... she's the only one who would have known these things," said Turner, who has written magazine articles and books for children, as well as adult novels with Christian themes. "If it's fact at all, Mary is the one who would have told him."
Turner also believes the Virgin - the Catholic Church's long fascination with her notwithstanding - "is a woman neglected in most of Christendom."
Thus, the play. "Woman In Light" is told entirely in the words of Mary, who speaks to an off-stage Luke.
Asked if he was a religious man, Turner said he disliked the term - but that he firmly believes Jesus rose from his grave. He attempted in his script to show a woman not devoid of human foibles, but also said he never forgot he was writing about the Virgin Mary.
His virgin mother, if still better than the bulk of us, is not quite a goody two shoes.
Rather, she seems a mostly likeable blend of the sacred and the vain. She wonders - nicely - if birthing the son of God mightn't have merited something a little classier than a pile of hay for a maternity bed.
She questions her son's choice of friends - while the locust-eating, camel's hair-clad John the Baptist makes her shake her head.
"I shall never understand why someone who looked like that was assigned to prepare the way," Mary says.
She is not even endlessly patient.
"But Joseph," she says upon being told there is no room at the inn, "could you not have made arrangements before?"
And there is this contender for understatement of the millennium, on her relationship with the Son of God himself:
"How awkward it was at times, being his mother."
Director Jim Galloway calls the script, with its measured cadences, "a tone poem." He also said it breaks new ground.
"How does she feel? The Bible doesn't tell us that," said Galloway. "We think we've seen and know all about Mary, but we really don't know anything. She really reveals herself much more [in the play] than she does in the Bible."
Is the play successful?
Well, who knows without seeing it.
But there is this to think about: At the Memphis premiere, a Catholic priest in the audience wept, said Turner, the playwright.
After the performance, a Greek Orthodox priest charged backstage - and kissed Johnson's hand. "I was totally floored," said Johnson, 41.
Which leads, perhaps, back to the earlier question Just where does Johnson go from playing the Virgin Mary?
Turner may have an idea.
"I think she was born to play two parts," the writer believes. The Virgin, he said, is one of them.
And the other?
"I think she would be the quintessential Blanche," in Tennessee Williams' steamy classic, "A Streetcar Named Desire,'' Turner said. "Williams would have loved her."
Woman in Light begins Thursday, 8 p.m., at Virginia Western Community College's Whitman Auditorium. Call 362-2628 for ticket reservations.
by CNB