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Ambrosia

nytheatre.com review by Timothy Fannon
August 15, 2005

My grandmother lives in New Jersey, and I don’t get to see her as much as I’d like. Mostly at holidays and family functions. But when I do see her, the familiarity, the soft skin, and the wet kiss are ever-present. And when I do afford myself the opportunity to reflect on my grandma, memories of comfort, security, family, and love are conjured. Ambrosia, performing in FringeNYC at Dixon Place, is a tribute to such memories and the bonds that are shared by family.Three elderly women carefully make their way onto the stage and take seats in a row, a TV dinner tray in front of each one, as if they are practicing their daily ritual of passing time on the front porch together. One knits, one plays solitaire, one keeps the beat with a twitching leg. With a mix of humor, honesty, and musing, the women reflect on their lives, and the families they built around them. The three old ladies are actually played by young women, who break from the performance occasionally to offer their own opinions of the grandmothers and the individual relationships they forged with these women as young children and beyond. The theatricality of this dual presentation reminds us that their portrayals of their grandparents are not simply realistic—they are based in memory, and through the lens of their own evolving experience. As strikingly different as these grandmothers are, the actresses, and by extension, the audience, are thrilled by the common bonds shared by the feminine relationship of women to their maternal forebears.The three performers emulating their grandmothers (and in one case, great grandmother)—Christine Ashe, Lilli Birdsell, and Susan Dalian—succeed beautifully in their roles and make the transition between grandmother and self fluid and seamless. They capture the subtlety, vulnerability, and experience of age in their elder representations, and keep the piece moving and engaging with a simple energy and commitment. I also commend the direction of Julie Ariola, who provides an economical yet specific environment, with a deft blend of musical underscore, for the three actresses to explore and identify with their roles.This piece is well-conceived and executed, though I found the transitions from grandmother to individual reflection slightly disengaging—I would have liked the piece to spend more time within the characters of the elderly ladies, allowing us to experience the actresses’ own perceptions and illuminations of their grandmothers through their characterizations. That aside, Ambrosia is quite moving, and tingles with an acute sensitivity to human experience.