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Lynda Sturner plays an angst-ridden mother in Paul Zindel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning production. |
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Local actress returns to set of former scene
Melora B. North
Banner Staff
When Truro actress Lynda Sturner was in the original off-Broadway production of Paul Zindel’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Effect of Gamma Rays On Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” nearly 40 years ago, she probably never dreamed she’d have an opportunity to be in it again, this time at the Provincetown Theater, where it opens Saturday at 7:30 p.m. And it probably never crossed her mind that she’d be playing in a completely different slot with a more mature edge as Beatrice, the single mother of two daughters. First time around, Sturner played dual understudy roles as the daughter, Ruth, an epileptic, and also as her sister’s archrival at the science fair, fellow student Janice (originally played by Swoosie Kurtz, this time around by Danielle Cardinal). But after all, time does march on.
“I was the understudy for Ruth and got fired,” she says. “My boyfriend broke up with me. I was devastated. … I stopped acting for 30 years.”
However, she came out of her moratorium in the late ‘90s when playwright Sinan Unel asked her to do a reading at what was then the Provincetown Rep, and that’s when things started to heat up for her again. Meryl Cohen got her further motivated to apply the grease paint when she asked Sturner to be in one of her annual Women’s Week comedies. After the first one, Sturner’s participation became a given.
“She always has me play the Jewish mother,” the actress says with a chuckle.
With five of Cohen’s plays under her belt to date, Sturner has also been in a couple of Counter Production shows, “Bingo” and “The Seagulls of Montauk,” both produced by Susan Grilli, who is also producing this show. Sturner has also worked with the play’s director, Patrick Falco, in past productions.
With a BFA from the theater school at Boston University, Sturner was in the Broadway production of “Oliver” and in the years before her acting hiatus acted in commercials, summer stock and industrial movies. In fact, at one point she detoured to California for a screen test to be in “Hello Dolly.” She didn’t get the part, but ended up staying for two years before returning to New York, where she lived with her husband Jerry Traum for 30 years before his death eight years ago. In the meantime, they purchased their Truro getaway 28 years ago, and it is in that home that she has been living full-time since last May.
“It can be scary to be on stage,” she says. “I think I’m ready to go on stage. I’m always nervous but I’m ready — in fact, I’ve already got my lines memorized, I memorized them in California, where I spent the month of January. I go over the script every morning and every night. I came to rehearsal off-book. I’ve never done that before,” she laughs.
Originally from Buffalo, N.Y., Sturner looks back and describes this production as “very sad, powerful. They don’t have a good life. When I was in it before I didn’t understand the mother — she is in such awful pain, awful to the kids. I didn’t think from a mother’s point of view.”
The story is of the widow Beatrice, whose husband leaves her with two daughters before his untimely death. There is no money and little love in the household; Beatrice abuses her girls and even the boarders they take in to supplement their pocketbook. One daughter, Ruth — played in this production by Braunwyn Jackett — is an epileptic, unstable, extroverted youth clearly out of control, but submissive to her short-tempered, self-centered mother, who is a narcissistic mess. The other daughter is Matilda, played by Marisa Skillings, the main protagonist, who is an unpopular, genius science nerd intent on winning a science fair at school, much to the dismay of her mother who wants nothing other than to see her daughter fail in life as she has.
“No one does this production, I don’t know why,” says Sturner. “Maybe because it’s very bleak. This woman has the worst life — in fact, one of her lines is ‘I hate the world.’ Some people say the play is about the author’s mother, who took in boarders. [The playwright] was a science teacher in Staten Island where the play takes place.”
“The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” plays at the Provincetown Theater, 238 Bradford St. in Provincetown, March 21 and 26 through 29 at 7:30 p.m. with a matinee at 2 p.m. March 22. Admission is $18.50 to $22.50.
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Mar 19th, 2009