The Greater Love

From The Virginian-Pilot, March 20, 2008

by Mal Vincent

Frankie Little Hardin avoids pitfalls that usually afflict 'historical' drama with "The Greater Love", her play that is having its world premiere run at 40th Street Stage through March 29.  Ostensibly the play is about the life of Frederick Douglass, the most prominent African American orator, journalist and antislavery leader of the 19th century.

Hardin wisely has chosen to be a playwright rather than a historian, and she weaves a compelling and involving drama around the famous man's private life.

The eternal triangle formula never fails when it comes to persuading audiences, as well as the characters, to choose sides.  It works better than usual here.  In her very first scene, Hardin has a confrontation after their deaths between two women in Douglass' life ( at least, his life as she depicts it).

Anna Murray is the wife and mother of his five children - the woman who 'has made a good home'.  She is uneducated and practical, and he declares, "I've become someone else".  The other woman is Ottilie Assing, his mistress, a white woman from Germany he claims 'has long been my rock'.

Murray observes that she has always known about the affair and that she knows that Assing "has been waiting 28 years for me to die".

The scene ends with Assing committing suicide.  In real life, Assing committed suicide upon hearing of Douglass' 1884 marriage to another white woman, Helen Pitts.  Pitts is not mentioned in the play* which is all to the good.  A triangle is much more playable than a quartet.

In fact, Hardin's play is best for what it is not.  It is not a play about a cardboard historic figure.  It is not a play 'about' race.  It is not 'about' an interracial affair.

"The Greater Love" is more accurately about two women and how both live in the shadow of a famous man - each loyal and loving in different ways.  Too often, plays, films and books about famous people attempt too much and become fragmented in episodic ways.

Because Hardin has focused on the personal level, she has turned out a play that may well have a life of its own. 

 On the other side of the ledger, we are asked to take Douglass' greatness, and his greatness as an orator, at face value.  Terrance Afer-Anderson, a local theatre veteran and writer of repute, plays Douglass as a noble and honored man who keeps his distance.  He does it well.  This Douglass is quiet and introspective rather than fiery.  There is a suggestion that his long battles against oppression have left him famed but weary.

There is more than a little suggestion, too, that Douglass was a self-serving opportunist.

The real conflict at the center of the play is between the two women.  It is also understated.  The audience perks up like canines panting for a bone when the German journalist finally blows her top at the realization that she's not going to have the famous man permanently.  She calls the wife a 'stupid hag' as she reminds him that he owes her something for all the years they're traveled together, with her working as a manager and secretary.

Beth Pivirotto is intriguingly multifaceted as the 'independent' woman who may, from the first, have been intent upon breaking up the marriage.  The well-structured script drops little hints like bread crumbs on the way to the gingerbread house.  Assing is an atheist and a German, complete with braided hair.  Pivirotto displays one of the best accents heard on local stages in seasons - just a hint of the German background but enough.  Very effective.

However, is the journalist a conniving Jezebel homewrecker, or a woman in love, trapped in an unfortunately adulterous situation?  The women in the audience have no doubt...they seemed to have to restrain themselves from storming the stage and throwing her into the wings.

LaToya Morris is wonderfully natural and exuberant as the wife, a woman who knows the score but has few weapons with which to fight the worldly challenger who is travelling around the world with her husband.  Morris took over the role at the last moment but she brings great heart and down-to-earth soul to the part.

No less effective is the voice of youth that completes the cast of four.  Joy White is cast as Rosetta, Douglass' daughter who works with him on his newspaper and longs to escape from the cleaning and scrubbing life that her mother vows is her only choice.  Why doesn't she resent the 'other woman'?  White helps us to understand that Rosetta would rather be like this woman than her mother.

The 40th Street Stage has unveiled a worthy drama that is blessed with logical and well-structured characterizations.  More than browsing through dusty history books, it is focused on a basic character conflict that encourages us to take sides. Such is the stuff of good drama.