‘Pride’s Crossing’ Reflects on Life, Passage of Time

Great actresses are ageless, as Cherry Jones demonstrates in “Pride’s Crossing,” Tina Howe’s giddily elegiac play having its world premiere at the Old Globe Theatre here. Jones portrays Mabel Tidings Bigelow as a bent-over, willful and almost-deaf 91-year-old woman who nevertheless still lights up at the sound of a human voice on the other end of the phone, and as a young woman in the bloom of an athletic youth, about to swim the English Channel. Without ever leaving the stage, the actress transforms sans wig or makeup. She uses her body, her voice and the luminous soul that shines out of Mabel from early girlhood all the way through to the final lawn party in a distinguished yet all too sadly commonplace life.

Jones is a star now, and she takes a star’s liberties, at times pushing her trademark gaze--lips pressed together in an almost comical smile, so lost in thought that her eyes begin to cross, full of goodness. But there is no mistaking the mark of greatness in her; she can offer the soul of a character the way other actresses offer a trait. Howe’s play, so airy that it teeters on the brink of breathlessness, is anchored by Jones in the way that “Coastal Disturbances,” the playwright’s 1986 work, was anchored by Annette Bening. The ecstatic outbursts that punctuate Howe’s work require actresses with the rare gift of being naturally luminous.

Crossing backward and forward in time, “Pride’s Crossing” tells the story of a shy young woman from blue-blood New England stock who is most comfortable hanging out with the servants. Through swimming, she finds that she possesses strength and endurance.

There is a poetic strain in the household; her best friend Chandler Coffin (Jeffrey Hayenga) is a club-footed poet, hopelessly in love with her of course, and her brother Frazier (Robert Knepper) is an eccentric wastrel out of “Brideshead Revisited.” Her father (William Anton) is fond but often absent, and her haughty mother (nicely played by Monique Fowler, who also plays Mabel’s granddaughter) is disapproving, threatened by her soft-spoken daughter’s emerging passion.

Howe provides sketches of some of the key moments in Mabel’s life. The first act shows clearly how the old woman’s tantrums are deeply connected to her family’s inability to understand her desires. We see Mabel finally find her tongue and the courage to swim the Channel, and, less persuasively, how she loses the courage to marry the man she loves. This last event goes almost entirely unremarked. And when the elder Mabel finally confronts this crucial failure of her life, the moment still feels dramatically insufficient.

In the second act, Mabel forges a connection with her young great-granddaughter Minty Renoir (this, in the Howe tradition of using names in which homage is indistinguishable from parody). Another loose thread involves the elderly Mabel’s relationship with the delinquent son (Knepper) of a housekeeper (Marceline Hugot). Howe seems to have strong feelings for the troubled boy, but she never makes clear what they are. Still, “Pride’s Crossing” manages to be a vibrant play even with some of the heartbeats missing.

Director Jack O’Brien and his designers exploit what is magical in the play, and they lift it toward the transcendent. Across a huge backdrop, Michael Gilliam lights a painted ocean of shifting watercolor hues. Ralph Funicello’s open set is lovely--plenty of room for the past and the present there. A floating clock hangs off-center, the one unchanging element in the various rooms in Mabel’s life and thoughts. Robert Morgan’s colorful dresses and his bathing suit for the young Mabel bring the past alive with the piquancy it still retains in the old woman’s mind.

O’Brien has found a visual style that suggests the transparency of pain--such as when Mabel and her husband argue bitterly while their little daughter sits in a chair behind them, and we understand she is cowering in her bed. He haunts the play aurally, too (with the help of sound designer Jeff Ladman). In between scenes we hear mystically inclined music, and at some points we hear feminine voices repeating the refrain that Mabel sings to herself when swimming--”Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily / Life is but a dream.”

At these moments the show takes on a beautifully abstract hue, and a theatergoer can feel the proximity of old selves to present selves, the elusive, floating essence that remains unaltered in us even as we age. It’s possible at these moments to feel our own lives, as Mabel’s, spread out before us. Our triumphs, the bitter disappointments that seem so deep and so permanent--all of that seems in danger of evaporating into the air.

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“Pride’s Crossing,” Old Globe Theatre, Simon Edison Centre for the Performing Arts, San Diego, Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends March 2. $22-$39. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

Cherry Jones: Mabel Tidings Bigelow

Marceline Hugot: Vita Bright, Pru O’Neill, Kitty Lowell

Jeffrey Hayenga: Chandler Coffin, Phinney Tidings, Mary O’Neill

Robert Knepper: West Bright, Frazier Tidings, Pinky Wheelock, David Bloom

William Anton: Gus Tidings, Anton Gurevitch, Porter Bigelow, Wheels Wheelock

Monique Fowler: Maud Tidings, Julia Renoir

Hilary Elizabeth Clarke, Nichole Danielle Givans : Minty Renoir, Emma Bigelow

An Old Globe Theatre production. By Tina Howe. Directed by Jack O’Brien. Sets Ralph Funicello. Costumes Robert Morgan. Lighting Michael Gilliam. Sound Jeff Ladman. Stage manager Peter Van Dyke.