The trouble with Crossing the Bay isn't that it's set in the 19th century; the trouble is that it's written from a 19th-century perspective. This is an important distinction: From the history plays of Shakespeare to Brecht's Galileo, playwrights have shown that it's possible to take a modern standpoint on the past, a standpoint that resonates with the up-to-date outlook of the audience.
But Crossing author Bill Leavengood leaves modern thinking behind in his evocation of 1887 Tampa-St. Petersburg. So we get old-fashioned characters, without benefit of Freud or Jung, old-fashioned society, without benefit of Marx or Weber, and an old-fashioned worldview, without benefit of Nietzsche or Sartre.
Crossing the Bay is quaint, harmless, pleasant. You can bring your grandparents or grandchildren without fear of upsetting either. But this also means that you won't find much to think about: This is a sexless, bloodless world wherein all problems are soluble, all daughters are marriageable – and scratch a villain and you'll find vanilla ice cream. If Kierkegaard or Dostoyevsky showed up at one of Crossing's square dances, he'd be arrested and incarcerated for harboring illegal depths.
Not that Leavengood hasn't warned us of his story's 19th-century pedigree. All the promotional materials for Crossing the Bay make it clear that the play is based on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813), a masterpiece about sisters, marriage and money. And in fact, Leavengood cleverly turns the one story into the other.
He imagines two sisters, Jane and Lizzie Tippetts (parallel to Austen's Bennet sisters), whose father is an orange grower on the verge of losing his acreage to a distant relation. Into the sisters' world come two wealthy, eligible bachelors: Frederic Disston (based on Charles Bingley), who's smitten at once by Jane, and Colin Plant (based on Mr. Darcy), who eventually falls for the boisterous Lizzie.
But there are forces obstructing these romances: The Tippetts are mere farmers, whereas Disston is related to rich landowner Hamilton Disston and Plant is the nephew of entrepreneur Henry B. Plant (the millionaire relatives really existed, unlike the play's lovers). Further, Colin Plant is so arrogant and imperious, he himself is the best argument that anyone could use against him. So we're asked to consider: Will the Tippetts sisters finally marry into money? Will cold Colin Plant ever reveal that he's Mr. Nice Guy? Will old Captain Tippetts get to keep his precious orange groves?
Surrounding this plot, but not really illuminating it, are references to the history of St. Petersburg and Tampa. We hear parts of St. Petersburg called by all sorts of unfamiliar names: Disston City, Wardsville, Williamsville and the Pinellas Peninsula. We attend the grand opening of the lavish, minaret-capped Tampa Bay Hotel (now the University of Tampa), and we hear, also confusingly, about various schemes to run a railroad to Tampa or St. Pete (having seen the play and read the script, I still can't figure out where the railroad goes or doesn't).
We briefly meet Peter Demens, who's Russian of all things, and manages to name St. Petersburg after his hometown; and we encounter H. B. Plant, a railroad tycoon with a brusque exterior but a heart of gold (not). And through it all, we're regaled with Lee Ahlin's songs, all of which have intelligent lyrics but few of which offer memorable music.
Fortunately, we're graced with Lino Toyos' set design: from the Tippetts' farm to the Tampa Bay Hotel ballroom, these environments are beautifully imagined. Amy Cianci's period costumes are also impressive, and these two elements together – sets and costumes – give the production the look, if not the ring, of success.
Then there's the acting, which is usually, but not always, persuasive. Best of all is Jennie Eisenhower, who really does have star quality: Her Lizzie Tippetts is fun-loving, charismatic, brash and indomitable. Tara Moore is likable as uncomplicated sister Jane, but Eric Davis as Colin Plant plays his character's arrogance almost too well. It's hard to believe, even after Lizzie supposedly melts him, that he won't turn out to be an abusive husband.
Leavengood has written Frederic Disston as a likable, simple character, and Brian Shea plays this well, though without adding anything more dimensional. Jeff Norton as Captain Tippetts doesn't seem old enough, or pained enough, to suggest a war-wounded Sisyphus, heroic among the groves. In smaller roles, Bonita Agan, Donna Anderson, Colleen McDonnell, Emilia Sargent and Jon Van Middlesworth all turn in solid performances.
But strangely enough, the most memorable actor after Eisenhower is David Powers, whose Reverend Adnoyd is a multi-sided caricature of greed masquerading as charity, vanity disguised as modesty, and star-struck sycophancy worshipping unashamedly at wealth's altar.
The only singing voices that stand out as being of musical-theater quality are Eisenhower's, Davis' and McDonnell's; but when the whole cast joins in a song, the effect is more than a little satisfying. And in fact, these group songs – "A Beautiful Florida Night" and "Social Event of the Season" – show composer Ahlin at his best.
Still, the play doesn't work. It moves along like a horse-and-carriage, slow and out of date, not anywhere near being relevant to a modern driver. I've admired author Leavengood's work in the past – particularly on Webb's City and The Floridians, both for LiveArts – but this effort never speaks to us moderns from a perspective we recognize. We leave the theater feeling as distant as ever from 1887, from Demens, Disston, Plant and the rest of them. We sense that the story we've just seen has been sanitized. We sense that the real version is far more interesting.
And it's that uncensored version – rendered graphically by a candid playwright – which is the one we need if we're to know our own history.
Performance Critic Mark E. Leib can be reached at mark.leib@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Jan 19-25, 2005.
