To Have and Have Almost

There’s going to be a lot of sentiment going about during the 100th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s birth in July. Part of that sentiment is on view in Alternative Repertory Theatre’s world premiere of Lucille deView’s “A Summer With Hemingway’s Twin.”

Hemingway and his sister Marcelline weren’t actually twins. She was 18 months older than Ernest, but their mother Grace sometimes dressed them as twin girls, and sometimes as twin boys. One wonders what she had in mind. Whatever, it resulted in Hemingway’s well-documented super efforts to prove himself masculine.

DeView’s semiautobiographical play views a summer she spent as a mother’s helper at the Hemingway summer cottage at Walloon Lake, Mich. The fiction here is a romance with an old Hemingway family friend, the fictional Willis Homer Whittemore.

The play is basically a series of postcards from that summer, showing the Hemingway family as deView knew them. But the Hemingways are rarely more than background for Lila Violet Nobis, deView’s alter ego, to have a confusing and surface affair with Willis. The scenario of the affair is tried-and-true romance, a naive college girl with writing ambitions, and a free-and-easy older man, claiming an imminent divorce, but unable to throw away his adored wife and young son.

The whole idea is worthy, and deView’s writing is sometimes exquisite and touching, particularly in the balance between the various relationships, but dramaturgically her play remains bland and colorless, without a dramatic fulcrum to forge it into real drama.

The script is made to look better than it is by director Joel T. Cotter and a very fine cast. Cotter creates moods and moments that are real, honest and often theatrical, looking and feeling very much of the play’s time--1939. What he hasn’t been able to give the script is excitement. There is little tension. Even the minimal question of whether or not Ernest will arrive for his birthday party is underplayed in the script, and its effect never comes to a head.

*

Heather Kjos is marvelously restrained and real as Lila, the college student who spends her whole summer hoping to meet her literary idol. Kjos’ buoyant, wide-eyed wonder at being with the actual Hemingway family is refreshing and believable. As the fictitious wealthy Hemingway friend who entrances her, Frank Romeo provides enough charm and intelligence to make Lila’s infatuation true, and in moments of romance or regret, he provides interesting detail.

Sally Leonard couldn’t be better as Marcelline, Hemingway’s older sister, maintaining Marcelline’s insistence on being more than just Ernie’s sister, and showing more interest in those around her than her brother did. Myrna Niles, as the matriarch Grace, is crisp and very grand, a pleasure to watch and listen to, but her costumes, by Michael Pacciorini and Wilma Mickler-Sears, are what she might have worn in 1914, but definitely not what Grace Hemingway would be wearing in 1939.

*

As Marcelline’s young daughter Carol, Katie Brittle is bright and sparkling, but seems a little mature for the role. And, one wonders, with Hemingway’s nephew and great-nephew in the audience on opening night, why Marcelline’s sons, though mentioned, never appear. Another hint at the author’s formative years surrounded only by women?

* “A Summer With Hemingway’s Twin,” Alternative Repertory Theatre, 125 N. Broadway, Santa Ana. Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 & 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends July 3. $22-$25. (714) 836-7929. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

Heather Kjos: Lila Violet Nobis

Sally Leonard: Marcelline Hemingway Sanford

Katie Brittle: Carol Sanford

Myrna Niles: Grace Hall Hemingway

Frank Romeo: Willis Homer Whittemore

An Alternative Repertory Theatre production of Lucille deView’s drama. Produced by Gary Christensen. Directed by Joel Cotter. Scenic design: Michael E. Puoci. Lighting design: Bill Georges. Costume design: Michael Pacciorini, Wilma Mickler-Sears. Sound design: Patrick Johnson. Stage manager: Julia A. Stormont.