A tempest and a teapot

Actresses find 'Going to St. Ives' a challenge

Lindsay Crouse (left) and Jacqui Parker play a doctor and patient operating across a cultural divide in "Going to St. Ives." (Shawn g. Henry)

"Going to St. Ives" plays like a game of cat and mouse, say co-stars Lindsay Crouse and Jacqui Parker.

"It's a battle of wills," says the Oscar-nominated Crouse, who is appearing at the Gloucester Stage Company for the second summer in a row. "These are frightening roles to play, but so full of life, they're irresistible," she says.

Written by Lee Blessing ("A Walk in the Woods"), the play, opening today, explores the meeting of two women, from distinctly different worlds, who discover they have more in common than they thought. Crouse plays Cora, an affluent British doctor. She is operating on May (Parker), the empress of an African country, but each is trying to convince the other to help further an agenda unrelated to the medical condition.

"This is a wonderfully complex play," says Crouse. "It connects these two women at a moment in their lives when they're feeling unmoored, when they realize everything is not fine, and they have to get up the nerve to take responsibility for their next move. I love that."

The challenge of playing May, says Parker, is that the country where she has the title of empress is run by a ruthless dictator who happens to be her son. "May believes the British are only moral when it suits them," she says, "but she makes moral judgments that she has to live with, too."

Parker notes that her own stepfather was from Ghana, which gives her "a place to draw some ideas about the path May's son has taken.

"The culture is very different, especially the way men view women, but there's a level of pride, so even if a man makes the wrong decision, he must stand by it," she explains.

Written in 1996, "Going to St. Ives" is typical of Blessing's method - to take an intimate conversation between two characters and open it up to a world of grand ideas. The play's second act offers a moral dilemma for both the characters and the audience, a twist Crouse said was so intriguing, she suggested the play to Gloucester Stage artistic director Eric C. Engel.

"My mother had seen the play in New York," says Crouse, "and she is a very good judge of theater."

That may be an understatement. Anna Crouse is the widow of playwright Russel Crouse, who co-wrote "Life With Father" and the book for "The Sound of Music," among other projects. Crouse and Howard Lindsay wrote "Sound of Music" while summering in nearby Annisquam, where Lindsay Crouse spent childhood summers and today has a home near her mother's. But last year's successful Gloucester Stage production of "The Belle of Amherst" was the first time she'd stepped on stage there.

"This was always the place to come to get away from the business," she says. "But there have been such enormous changes in the film industry, with 50 percent of prime time TV made up of reality shows, I found stepping on stage and doing something challenging was just what I needed."

The characters in "Going to St. Ives" first meet over tea, a ritual Parker found rich in symbolism.

"I like a good cup of tea and pretty china, but I had no idea there was so much subtext to it," Parker explains. "The English do not play when they are having tea, and the ritual has great value to both of these women. That's what brings them together. Where they take it from there becomes increasingly intense."

Blessing doesn't pull any punches, Crouse agrees.

"There is some rough talk about prejudice and colonialism and what our responsibilities are at this point," the actress says. "The ritual of tea becomes a starting point for something much deeper."