PHAMALY

reviews

• PHAMALy rides deluge into drama

  January 21, 2011

  by John Moore

  The handicapped theater company PHAMALy had been presenting rousing Broadway musicals for 17 years before adding dramatic plays to its repertoire in 2007. With its solid new staging of “The Diviners,” it’s clear that its acting is catching up to its singing. Anchored by a measured, understated performance by Jeremy Palmer, PHAMALy is presenting, perhaps for the first time, a nonmusical that can stand alongside the work of the better theater companies in town. That’s the handiwork of first-time PHAMALy director Christy Montour-Larson, who has lovingly crafted Jim Leonard’s Depression-era tale with a decent and unpretentious touch. She also happens to be at the top of her craft, most evident in the creative, confident way she stages the harrowing, climactic river scene.

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• A divine interpretation of Depression-era drama

  January 20, 2011

  by Adam Goldstein

  Jim Leonard Jr.’s Depression-era drama “The Diviners” taps into that anonymous, frightening energy — it becomes a constant, unnamed presence that lurks behind the conversational tone and measured pace of the piece. A looming storm deeply affects the characters in Leonard’s fictional Indiana town of Zion; their collective fates seem tied inextricably to the course and current of the river that cuts through their land. The PHAMALy theater troupe’s current staging of the show does a fine job of balancing that larger undercurrent with folksy charm and affecting characterization. Compelling human drama finds a place alongside larger themes of faith and nature. Individual questions of family duty and religious devotion play out in a daunting, symbolic landscape. Most striking, perhaps, is the way this particular company tackles the drama’s central theme of personal gifts. Since 1989, PHAMALy — short for the Physically Handicapped Artists and Musical Artists League — has worked to provide professional opportunities for actors, artists and crew members living with physical disabilities. The theme in “The Diviners” of looking past superficial appearances to find deeper, inner gifts gains an added power in this production.

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• Jim Leonard's The Diviners flows pretty well in this PHAMALY production

  January 18, 2011

  by Juliet Wittman

  I was surprised to discover that Jim Leonard’s The Diviners was written as recently as 1980. The play feels like a period piece, and not just because it’s set in the Depression. Buddy Layman, the central character, was brain-damaged by an almost-drowning at the age of four, during which his mother died; since then, he has been so terrified of water that he refuses to allow his father to wash him. But paradoxically, this young boy also has a miraculous ability to predict rain, and to locate water sources for his parched fictitious town. Into this setting comes a stranger — think Orpheus Descending (there’s even a significant blue bird in Diviners, as in that magnificent text), Picnic, The Music Man — named C.C. Showers (surely no pun intended?), a preacher who’s abandoned his mission and is seeking manual work. Showers forms an understanding bond with the boy. But the religion-ridden town has been without a church for a while, and several of the women are wildly excited when they realize that Showers is the former preacher. Despite his protestations that he no longer has faith, they insist on seeing almost every move he makes as evidence of a divine mission.

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