William Wood’s Ode to Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson gets a new theatrical once-over in William Wood’s “The Magic Prison: Emily Dickinson in Words and Music,” opening this weekend at Theatre West.

“I’ve been aware of Emily Dickinson as long as I can remember,” said playwright Wood, who also has three novels, a book of poetry and a batch of TV movies to his credit. “In 1972, I acquired a boxed edition of her complete poems, and as I was reading one of them, a tune came into my head.” Encouraged by his wife, Wood went further. “I sat down with a three-volume collection, flipped through the pages in an almost trance-like state. My finger would come down on a poem, and I’d write about it. The original idea was to have it done as a record, but that died out, as did my marriage.”

He remarried. His new wife also became a fan, suggesting that he find a vehicle for the music. “At first, the Dickinson theme was just a framework for the songs, but that didn’t work well at all. Eventually I clicked into what we have now: The words have equal significance with the music. It’s really a play with music--instead of music with some text attached. But it’s been a long process. And through the years, the musical muse had left me, so I enlisted Glenn Mehrbeck to write some new songs. There are now 21 of them.”

Wood has contributed very little to the text. “There is some monologue for the narrator,” he said. “But most of it consists of letters, poems, correspondence and things that other people wrote about her. So it’s just putting that together in a dramatic context with the songs. Writers always want an audience to respond to their work in a certain way. In this case, I wanted them to respond to something beautiful. I want them to be swept away by the sheer beauty of her work and her thoughts.”

As for the elusive heroine herself, “In the past, Emily Dickinson has always been portrayed as this neurasthenic, almost ghostly presence, who dressed in white and hid herself away. She’s almost become a character in a gothic novel--highly sentimentalized. Then Julie Harris took it the other way. She turned Emily into a garrulous, gregarious girl-next-door. Our Emily falls somewhere between those two poles: She’s not a weird, half-mad creature--but she’s not a normal outgoing neighborly person either. She’s a troubled soul, someone who suffered a great deal.”

Actress Brooke Adams (“Key Exchange,” “Days of Heaven” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”) recently opened at the Callboard in “Over Mother’s Dead Body,” co-starring with her sister--and the play’s author--Lynne Adams.

“Lynne wrote it after my father died, and it’s dedicated to him,” said Adams. “He had an idea about pooling our energies to make something positive happen.” In the play, two sisters (played by the Adamses) go through their mother’s belongings after her death. “It’s about being ashamed of your family. The mother was an alcoholic. My character is also ashamed of the father’s idea of making money on it, writing a screenplay. So it’s really about coming to terms with your family. And spirituality triumphs over the monetary.”

As for the sister connection, “We’ve done this play in the summer theater (Green Plays) we ran in Upstate New York,” said Adams, who recently played it very pregnant on “Moonlighting.” “And yeah, it feels personal--even though it’s highly fictionalized. We found we can work out emotional things on a highly detached plain. But we’ve been working on this a long time, so we’ve gone through a lot of stages. Besides dredging up all the old stuff, this seems to be a way to lay it all to rest.”

CRITICAL CROSS FIRE: Miguel Mihura’s farcical “Three Top Hats” (1932), about a staid bridegroom whose wedding eve--and life--are turned upside down by a traveling circus troupe, opened last month at the Odyssey Theatre.

The Times’ Sylvie Drake applauded Ron Sossi’s “vivid direction. . . . While it’s not a perfect play and seems saddled, in 1988, with some extraneous baggage, the whimsy and edge of absurdity in Mihura’s fantasy is reminiscent most of Anouilh or Giraudoux, with an indigenous streak of purely Spanish chauvinism.”

Said Amy Dawes in Daily Variety: “Mihura’s play, set in pre-revolutionary Spain, has imagination, whimsy and bittersweet charm well-worth reviving, and director Sossi has coaxed some enchanting high jinks from the players in this bon vivant bohemian ballet.”

In the Herald-Examiner, Richard Stayton grumbled over the nearly three-hour running time: “ ‘Three Top Hats’ will prove more exhausting than entertaining to general audiences. The Odyssey’s respectful production is admirable but too faithful to the original text. What once shocked and titillated now seems dated and contrived.”

From Drama-Logue’s Polly Warfield: “The play’s difficulties of concept and execution have caused it to languish in relative neglect, but Sossi and his newly formed Latin Actors and a Few Others tackle it with splendid vigor, vitality and bravura. The ensemble’s enthusiasm never droops; all give their all.”

The Outlook’s Willard Manus found “a farce whose spirit calls to mind the Fellini of ‘La Strada’ and ‘Nights of Cabiria.’ . . . Sossi gets maximum fun and energy out of his large cast, and he’s been greatly aided by costumer Ann Reghi, choreographer Michael Rooney and the sound and light crew.”

Said Ezhra Jean Black in the L.A. Weekly: “Sossi attempts to transform a dated proto-surrealist bedroom farce into a dream of transformation with the infusion of a little Fellini magic, underscored with the appropriate Nino Rota themes, and an overall carnival atmosphere. But the task is not a simple one.”

Last, from Madeleine Shaner in the B’nai Brith Messenger: “(The piece is) a raucous romp from the contemporary Spanish theater, a riotous babel of color and noise, licentiousness and larceny, with magic and mirth to spare and romance to boot, not to mention a pinch of metaphor hidden somewhere in its soul.”

MIZ BIZ: Although seats are still available, as of last Tuesday, “Les Miserables” (opening June 1 at the Shubert) has set a record-breaking advance box office of $7,126,733.