THEATER REVIEW: “Scarecrow,” a mono drama written and performed by Heidi Armbruster, at Dorset Theatre Festival through July 23

Dina Janis has cultivated, as a good director does, a rambunctious hit of a play from a quiet personal monologue performed by the author of the piece. For the second time this week, I have seen a play about the special relationship between a father and daughter, this one wrapped in a cancer death on a farm which has meant less to the woman than it has to the man. Heidi Armbruster takes us down the thirty-one day transition from life to death and beyond to the uneasy, grave moments that follow. Heidi goes through her reminiscence with a light-hearted swath of events, including her very personal decisions about having a child (she apparently has a glorious uterus) at the age of forty-four. But everything she talks about in this beautifully-staged work is charged with comedy and framed with loss, a difficult combination to make work, but make it she does. Make it she does!

On a massive set created by Christopher and Justin Swader and beautifully lit by Paul Whitaker, Armbruster conjures up her mother, her father, his girlfriends, several cats, even more doctors, cows and bulls, two psychics, neighbors and relatives, an egg donor, and at least a dozen plants in the course of her 84 minute play. In this setting she, herself, is never lost, never out of our sight. That is an achievement not to be sneezed at.

I have never been a big fan of the mono-drama, and this show gave me the reason for that. The solo player is never really questioned or confronted by another character and no matter how good the actor is at other voices—and Armbruster is an excellent example of that talent—there never is a threat in a question, never a sense of dramatic confrontation, and I miss that in a play; I actually turn off a bit at times. The character of Heidi faces the death of her “favorite person in the world,” but we never truly see or hear him, only his shadow in her imitation and her presentation of his dilemma. She presents it all very well, but it is still seen from her point of view and not actually his. The mono-drama is good, but the play might be better; of course it might become maudlin but we’ll never know because she has chosen this form for telling us his part of the story. We’ll never see him with Barb or Helen or his wife. We’ll never see him with Heidi or her family or friends or neighbors. Imagine, if you can, “Death of a Salesman” told from Linda Loman’s memory of it all, no Biff or Happy, no Willie or employer or woman in a slip. It could be good; it might be wonderful for the right actress, but it would only be half of the story and that is what we ultimately have here: a beautifully produced, well-acted, finely directed half of a story.