‘Crimes of the Heart’ is an Intimate Look at Family Dysfunction
I remember being in high school and watching Desperate Housewives with my parents. During one episode, one of the characters had just been fighting with her family, and when they walked out the door, they better plaster a smile on their face and pretend to be a happy and healthy family. That sentiment always stuck in my head, and it’s a line that I still use in my therapy today. There’s such a focus on appearances in families, a desire to be perceived as perfect, that most people neglect that most families have some form of dysfunction, whether we realize it or not. After generations of trauma rolling down the hill, dynamics between members spiral out of control, and we become a system that functions because of the dysfunction. This lies at the heart of Avon Players Theatre’s Crimes of the Heart.
Created by Pulitzer-Prise-winning author Beth Henley in the late 1970s, Crimes of the Heart follows three sisters who are barely holding it together. With themes of morality, mental illness, and strength in the face of adversity, this stage play is heavy and served with a healthy dose of humor. Perhaps considered an acquired taste when it comes to dramedies, Crimes of the Heart doesn’t shy away from exploring dark topics, but instead embraces and normalizes the shadowy parts of life and the gray parts within people. But at its core, this stage play contains heart and drives home the importance of family, be it the one we’re born with or the one we make along the way.
Crimes of the Heart peels back the layers of what constitutes family and the great lengths we go to ward off loneliness with those bonds we make.
[Warning: spoilers from Crimes of the Heart are below!]
A lost family finds its way home in Crimes of the Heart
Lenny (Lisa “D” Denomme) is doing her best to keep her family together, which is no easy task. As the show opens, she’s celebrating her birthday all by herself in her grandfather’s kitchen, waiting for the return of her two younger sisters. All three sisters were raised by their Old Granddaddy after their mother killed herself along with the family cat. However, it was Lenny who stayed around. With a strong sense of duty to her kin, Lenny is tired and alone in her struggle to keep the family house running as it should, without her sisters.
There’s to be a reunion between the three sisters, although perhaps not the happiest of sorts. Everyone is reuniting at the old family home as a direct result of a shooting at the hands of Babe (Maia Fetter), the youngest of the bunch. With charges of homicide hanging over Babe, having shot her husband, there’s a sense of panic that is descending on those in the house. That is, for everyone except Babe, who is almost at peace with her choice or having a complete psychotic break from reality with her childlike disposition throughout the show.
And then there’s Meg (Tara Makar), a mess in her own right, who is disconnected from the family and the reality of the situation. She’s gone off and lived a fabulous life, putting the small town of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, behind her. Like all people who escape small towns, family and blood call her back to the middle of nowhere, where she’s drawn back into the fold, helped by a failed singing career. It’s not all bad, as Doc (Jeffrey Monterosso), a guy from Meg’s past that she still has a soft spot for, reminds her of the upside of life in Hazlehurst and the importance of being there for family.
As the walls close in on Babe and secrets become exposed, she must rely on her sisters to make it through. Can these three learn to lean on each other again, or are they destined to remain a broken family?
Wading through dark moments to find the light in this Avon Players production
Having watched my fair share of comedies, I’m a big proponent of dark humor. I was once told that members of the LGBTQ community appreciate dark humor more than other groups because we’ve toed that line so much in our journey to keep us alive. While that’s obviously an exaggeration, it doesn’t discount the fact that I can laugh through some pretty dark topics and situations pretty much all the time without exception. To fully appreciate this production, we must separate the source material from what we received on stage.
Looking at the basis of Crimes of the Heart, there is a lot that can be appreciated and some that felt too dark to laugh at. As a psychologist, I loved the exploration of dysfunction within a family system, as that is one of my specialties. Seeing how the system works, regardless of how well it functions, was exhilarating, to say the least. That portion of the source material was rich, with plenty of moments and dialogue to tease apart and examine. I’m sure it was just as exciting for the actors on stage to perform as it was for the audience to watch.
That being said, there were some components of the script that felt too far out of the realm of dark humor to be comfortable. Specifically, certain aspects of Babe’s crime, and I’m not referring to her attempting to murder her husband—instead, this idea of her sleeping with an underage boy, Willie Jay. I understand that Crimes of the Heart was written in a different time about a different time, but even so, the normalizing of such an experience and even pushing people to laugh at it felt wrong. This is nothing against the work that the actors and Avon Players put into the production, but more so a critique of the source material they worked with.
In fact, what made Crimes of the Heart so enjoyable, despite that hard-to-overlook issue with the script, was the acting of our three main leads. The chemistry between Denomme, Fetter, and Makar was oozing off the stage in every scene. You could feel the sisterhood that these three developed over the course of Crimes of the Heart, providing the show with the emotional backbone it needed.
Of the three, there was something about Tara Makar’s performance of Meg that drew me in and kept me engaged. She played the middle child perfectly, capturing both a careless energy and desire to be free, along with the need to protect her sisters in the only ways she knows how. We’ve all had family members like that, and Makar understood the assignment perfectly and put it into the Meg we saw on stage.
Avon Players make magic on stage
With two shows into their 2024-2025 season, Avon Players continues to prove that hard work and love of theater create something magical on their stage. Everyone involved is dedicated to the craft of telling stories, be it musicals or plays. This theater excels at what they do and stops at nothing to provide a wonderful escape for its audiences. Crimes of the Heart is just another fine example of Avon’s commitment to that and the lengths they’ll go to provide an excellent theater experience to anyone who comes to their shows.
Make sure to catch Avon Players Theatre’s next show, Farce of Habit, which runs from January 10 through the 25, so get your tickets now before they are gone! Have you seen Crimes of the Heart before? Let us know on social media @mycosmiccircus or @boxseatbabes!
Avon Players 2024-2025 Season is Not One to Miss!
