ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, August 3, 1996 TAG: 9608050120
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
It took awhile, but Tom Ziegler has finally lodged a little of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Manhattan.
``Grace and Glorie,'' Ziegler's play about a dying woman and an ex-New Yorker hospice worker thrust together in a mountain cabin, has been staged twice at Mill Mountain Theatre's Theatre B.
On July 16 - after months of negotiation - it opened in New York.
``Grace and Glorie'' has been playing to packed houses in the 399-seat Laura Pels Theater, Ziegler said. Although the theater is at Broadway and 45th Street, any theater with fewer than 500 seats is technically considered ``off-Broadway.''
But the opening was nonetheless a triumph for Ziegler, a Lexington playwright who had hoped to see his play staged in New York a year ago. The producers of ``Grace and Glorie'' at first had trouble finding a large enough theater - and after that, Ziegler said, the right actors.
Ziegler, who teaches at Washington and Lee University, has had other plays produced in New York, but never one with a production budget in six figures and an open-end run.
``It's been great,'' he said of the play's New York City life. ``I hope it goes forever.''
``Grace and Glorie'' plays off the differences between Grace, a 90-year-old illiterate mountain woman dying of cancer, and Gloria, a once highly successful New York businesswoman who is working at a Virginia hospice in an effort to give her life new meaning. After a rocky beginning, the two become close.
Though well reviewed here, some of the New York reviews have been less than kind - finding the play's ``city mouse, country mouse'' theme hackneyed even while praising Estelle Parsons (who plays the cantankerous Grace) for bringing it to life.
``Death lite,'' The New York Times labeled the play. ``A slick piece of entertainment on a theme that might have yielded something better,'' said the New York Daily News.
Variety at least credited the play with ``A little grace, if not glory.''
Ziegler said he expected no better. ``The print media, because it's a play where people feel and laugh, I wasn't surprised at the reaction. They sort of hated themselves for liking it.''
On the other hand, Ziegler said the play has been receiving standing ovations - something at least one reviewer noted, along with ``an audible scattering of sniffles.''
Ziegler also said that Parsons - a veteran actress perhaps best known for her role as Roseanne's mother on the popular television comedy - recently was on the TV chat show ``Regis & Kathie Lee'' talking about the play. Lucie Arnaz plays the New York-smart Gloria - whom Grace, to her annoyance, insists on calling ``Glorie.''
Ziegler wrote ``Grace and Glorie'' several years ago. It first was performed under the name ``Apple Dreams.''
The play, refined, was then performed twice as ``Grace and Glorie'' at Mill Mountain's Theatre B - most recently in April.
In an odd coda to the play's local history, the woman who played ``Glorie'' in the April production was jailed last week in Augusta County on charges that she plotted to kill her husband. Catherine Ann Christianson is accused of offering a laborer $20,000 to kill her spouse, an Augusta County Christmas tree farmer.
Christianson once had a recurring role in the ABC-TV soap opera ``One Life To Live,'' and has starred in many regional theater productions, according to wire service reports.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: File 1995. Tom Ziegler's play, ``Grace and Glorie,'' hasby CNBplayed twice in Roanoke. color.