That Reclusive Poet Opens Her Parlor Door
‘The Belle of Amherst’: Joely Richardson as Dickinson
Charles Isherwood
October 19, 2014: Emily Dickinson, that famously welcoming New England hostess of the 19th century, has thrown open her parlor doors to all comers at the Westside Theater, where a new production of William Luce’s biographical play The Belle of Amherst, starring Joely Richardson and directed by Steve Cosson, opened on Sunday night. Please note the sarcasm in that sentence. Although the posthumous publication of her extraordinary poetry made Dickinson a celebrated literary figure, during her lifetime, she was known in her hometown primarily for a reclusiveness bordering on pathology. The notion that she would confide her life story and her most deeply felt poems — or even her recipes for cake and gingerbread — to a couple of hundred strangers a night renders Mr. Luce’s play almost nonsensical from the get-go. Well, never mind. Mr. Luce dispenses with the anomalous conceit by having Dickinson announce in the opening moments: “Forgive me if I’m frightened. I never see strangers.” In any case, Dickinson idolizers are presumably not the target audience for this fluidly written solo play, which served as a durable vehicle for Julie Harris when it was first produced on Broadway in 1976.
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