‘Belle’ rings strong

Published 10:48 pm Friday, May 16, 2008

Good thing Edge cast Melanie Calderwood as the woman in “Belle of Amherst,” the one-woman study of one of our best poets. Any actress less ingenuous couldn’t get out the “phosphorescence” Emily Dickinson haloed her own private world with. Calderwood has it, shows it, glows with it.

Bear in mind, we’re talking about a spinster who lived for 41 years without ever wandering from the family home, yet wrote poetry that makes your hair stand on end. A shy, slim slip of a thing whose razor-sharp intellect penetrated through to the essence of the bee, buttercup, birds, blades of grass and others of nature’s wonders in her own back yard.

Let alone Dickinson’s insights into family, what few friends she had, passersby she noticed through the living room window and her own, very human heart. All of which ring with the truth of joys, sorrows, hopes and disappointments, victories and defeats endured and overcome.

And let alone Dame D’s innovations with rhyme and meter, all of which went unappreciated, if not ridiculed throughout her life. This gal got beat up for doing what came naturally.

So put aside the prodigious feat of memory William Luce’s script calls for. Ninety minutes of soliloquy? That’s enough to jam anyone’s mental machinery.

The question is: how to stage an original, a one of a kind, when all you got to work with is her poetry, diaries and letters?

The answer?

Ezra Pound’s “Poets are the antennae of the race.” Calderwood and director Roger Kelley had to turn off their eyes and ears and feel their way along. No other possibility is worth exploring.

How do I know?

They made me laugh. They made me think. They opened me to meaningful conversation with another of Dickinson’s groupies at intermission time.

I’ve seen other “Belles.” This one is second to none.

Reactions? Comments? E-mail Dale Burrows at entopinion@heraldnet.com or grayghost7@comcast.net.