Watching The Belle of Amherst at the Westside Theater, I found myself reminded of a line in a Bob Dylan song where he rasps, "people tell me it's a sin/to know and feel too much within." Enter Emily Dickinson, The Belle herself, that mysterious figure from our cultural lore and muse of many a graduate student. William Luce’s play, which originally premiered on Broadway in 1976, pays tender homage to the Dickinson's life and legacy, connecting fragments of her poetry, diaries, and letters with biographical fact to weave together an intense and personal one-woman performance.

In the original production, Julie Harris played the titular role to a tremendous critical reception, winning a Tony for Best Actress. Therefore, Joely Richardson, best known for her role on FX’s long running drama, Nip/Tuck, performs not only in the shadow of the great artist herself, but also Harris’s original portrayal. Her performance starts off a bit unassuredly, with Richardson as the 53-year-old Dickinson welcoming the audience into The Homestead, her life-long Amherst home which she shares with her sister Lavinia, also unmarried. But by the second act, Richardson fully transforms into a vulnerable and beautiful entity, proving herself to be an actress with a masterfully dynamic range of emotion. As Miss Dickinson, she can be whimsical, flighty, and charming as she shares baking recipes and enchants with stories of a happy and impish girlhood. But the moments of true, bone-chilling, heartbreaking inspiration come when she displays the aching fragility below the surface, and the years flow by to reveal a woman broken down by pain, rejection, loss, and loneliness.

Belle reads not only as a generous and thoughtful biography, but also as a document of New England in the late 1800s, and it is fascinating to hear the infamously reclusive artist recount life as it passed by outside of her window.  The play follows a loosely chronological account, as Dickinson takes us through a waltzing tour of her past from the memories of youth to the deaths of her parents. Luce evokes comedy in preconceptions the audience might have; Emily tells us with a wink that she delights in sending notes around town with puzzling messages for the recipients to ponder. He also reveals that she was a yearning and fierce woman who believed in her own genius and truly wanted to be recognized with critical success, yet was let down and unappreciated again and again.

The difficulties in sustaining energy in a one-person performance were offset not only by Richardson's impressive debut, but also through other elements of stagecraft, most notably David Weiner’s lighting design, which is so beautifully done it takes on a life of its own, illustrating the changing of the seasons and the years, shifting from night to day, highlighting the mercurial moods and flooding memories of Miss Emily.

To possess such a vivid interior life is both a tremendous gift and a deep curse. "It is dangerous to love as I do," Dickinson cautions. And to feel: truly, ecstatically, untempered. Luce has crafted such a caring narrative and Richardson acts her part so gracefully, that as an audience you experience a strange simultaneity of thought; you know that this embodiment of Dickinson needs no audience, her story swirls constantly in the recesses of that genius brain, and yet you're so glad that even for an evening, she's let you in.

The Belle of Amherst is now playing at the Westside Theater.  For more information and tickets visit https://belleofamherstplay.com/