One enters the story told in The Millay Sisters by way of a sort of tipsy stumble. Rachel Murdy, playing the role of Norma Millay, serves as emcee in a nostalgic cabaret type of set-up, singing songs from the early twentieth century to the piano accompaniment of Peter Szep, inviting members of the audience to read from their candle-lit tables selections from her “sister,” Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry, and gradually beginning to share little anecdotes and reminiscences peppered with wisecracks. As the swirl of memories thickens, Vincent, as she liked to be called (played by Margi Sharp Douglas) appears in the flesh as if summoned from memory’s halls.
Norma and Vincent proceed to sing together, banter back and forth and act out incidents from their separate and shared lives, usually with Vincent at the center of the drama and Norma acting as the raconteur, stepping on and off the stage of Vincent’s life. The cabaret structure melts into a more dramatic style of narrative, with playacting-cum-documentarian reenactment taking prominence over cabaret-style storytelling. In trying to cover all the details of Vincent’s life, The Millay Sisters stretches itself a bit thin at times; one might wish rather to linger longer on certain key aspects of that life and to have them presented with a tighter thread. But hers was an interesting life and her character complex. It is intriguing to glimpse how the events in the life of a poet informs her poetry.
The acting here, in the strict sense, is more projective than immersive. The actresses hold out the characters that they are representing as opposed to disappearing within the roles. This serves well to allow the natural personalities of the performers to penetrate the veils of mimicry and it is fitting for the structure of the play. The alternation between reminiscent narration à la the cabaret and the suspension of disbelief required towards the adopted identities would have been disorienting if the boundaries between actresses and characters were not visible. As such, through acting, singing and poetry, the underlying charms of Murdy and Douglas are able to play a bit more freely.
Douglas recites Vincent’s poetry sharply and poignantly, and the combined voices of Douglas and Murdy singing period songs make for sweet ear candy. Their musical movements are endowed with a graceful and complimentary physicality that is endearing. With these elements, The Millay Sisters affectionately presents a nice slice of literary biography in an entertaining and endearing format.
