Nightingale

I just got back from the Hartford Stage Company production of Lynn Redgrave’s play Nightingale. The play was very good; it chronicles her grandmother’s life from when she was a teenager in 1908 until she dies in 1972. I was great to watch Ms. Redgrave portray her grandmother at different ages but using just her posture, voice and lighting.

In the play, Redgrave chronicles her own journey back to her family in England. "I went looking for Beanie's grave and to my dismay found that her name had been washed away by the acid rain. The gravestone was blank." Thus began Redgrave's efforts to fill in the details of her grandmother's story by creating a fictional biography."; I've given her a new name, Mildred. And I've dreamed up a life. A memorial. For no one dies who is remembered." Spanning seventy years, Mildred's story includes the practicalities of marriage and the possibilities of love, sexual innocence and raising a family, emotional imprisonment and, eventually, rescue by a granddaughter who barely knew her.

Earlier in the day we had brunch at the Pond House in Elizabeth Park, the park was having their annual rose festival and the gardens were in full bloom. The park was mobbed I had to park my car in a lot on the other side of the park.