THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 5, 1996 TAG: 9603050032
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CRAIG SHAPIRO, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 55 lines
COLLEGE BASKETBALL fans have March Madness. Virginia Stage Company audiences have Lanie Robertson.
In March 1994, the VSC produced ``Alfred Stieglitz Loves O'Keeffe,'' his play about the relationship between the photographer and artist Georgia O'Keeffe. Last March saw ``Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill,'' which probed the sad life of Billie Holiday through her songs and Robertson's monologues.
Friday, the company goes three-for-three with ``A Penny for the Guy,'' a mystery drama set in a squalid part of London in the 1950s.
``We've been joking and calling it the `Lanie Robertson Festival,' '' said VSC artistic director Charlie Hensley, who is directing the production. ``But that's what attracted me to him - he writes in so many styles, styles that are completely different.''
The two first hooked up eight years ago in Philadelphia with ``Nasty Little Secrets,'' Robertson's play about the playwright Joe Orton.
Robertson has also dramatized the story of Hank Williams Sr. and recently finished a musical about Hans Brinker. And Hensley is dying to produce ``Last Gas Till Turnpike,'' which he likens to ``The Postman Always Rings Twice.''
``You can't do Noel Coward every year because basically he follows along the same style,'' Hensley said. ``But with Lanie Robertson you can do a different play every year and no one will get bored. He has a great sense of character, language and style. He's a real man of the theater.''
In ``A Penny for the Guy,'' the New York-based playwright focuses on the relationship between young Timmy, who has been abandoned by his parents, and Peg, a barmaid who stops by to check on him.
``She makes it clear that she's not hanging around,'' Hensley said. ``But, over the course of getting to know him, she can't help realizing that he's a good kid.''
She also learns that Timmy is hiding some terrible secrets: His father, an alcoholic truck driver, beat him for using electricity. His mother burned him with cigarettes.
The mystery is the parents' disappearance. It's not giving anything away to say that Peg knows more than she is willing to tell, or that she and Timmy come to learn that there is strength in numbers.
``You see Peg and Timmy grow so much,'' Hensley said. ``They've both had such hard lives that they've closed themselves off from the world. In finding each other, they're able to open up.
``I like to think of Peg as a mother waiting to happen.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Director Charlie Hensley
by CNB