Hearts to God

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Germinal Stage Denver has launched once upon-a-time theatre critic colleague, Jim Lillie officially as a playwright. Lillie’s first play Hearts To God will officially open at Germinal Stage Denver Friday, November 19.

Kristina Denise Pitt as marie and Jenny MacDonald as Mildred in Hearts to God.

Having visited a Shaker Village several years ago, Lillie’s curiosity and imagination explored this once powerful but somewhat mysterious religious sect. The result of his curiosity took form as the play, Hearts To God.

Known for their simple practical furniture, the stage setting features four wooden chairs, which will be auctioned at the end ol the play’s run. Shaker Cohoon originally painted the colorful simple watercolor reproduction of The Tree of Life on the stage back wall in 1854.

With choreographed structured staging, Hearts To God follows Sister Mildred, beautifully portrayed by Jenny MacDonald, through seven decades of Shaker life in The City of Peace Shaker Community at Hancock, Massachusetts.

Rattled in confusion, 12-year-old Mildred, and her 15-year-old sister, Marie (Kristina Denise Pitt) are left at the gate at the City of Peace in 1895 by parents who can no longer take care of them.

Directed by Ed Baierlein, Hearts To God features a melded cast of chemistry including Margaret Amateis Casart, Stephen R. Kramer, and Tad Baierlein. Ed Baierlein supplies an off stage voice providing significant dates in history such as the Wright Brothers first flight, birth of the dial telephone, World War I, and World War II to put into historical perspective the growth, development, and shriveling of this once prolific religious sect. Without deliberate communication to the world outside their communities, this technique gives valuable insight to the play’s format.

As the cast smoothly and easily changes characters and forms, MacDonald charismatically supplies the glue holding everything together allowing Mildred to reflect on her confusion, struggles, arguments, and frustrations searching to find her way and place in this community. The Shakers’ desire to find oneness with God established hundreds of rules to make their community work. Mildred finds herself fighting the strict abiding of rules. Men and women were separated. Founder Ann Lee believed male/female relationships were to be banned, which eventually brought about their destruction. The multi-level rulebook stated newspapers could be read only by permission.

In a soft narrative, MacDonald brings Mildred to believable life as she explores the Shakers beliefs, the importance of their songs, how and why the Shakers got their name, the hard work required to keep the farms running, their valuable inventions which they neglected to patent. Money, to them, was only a necessity. They realized too late the wealth they literally gave away. The inventions belonged to everyone, not to them. When Marie and Isaac (Tad Baierlein) marry and move to a near by farm, Mildred struggles whether she too wants to stay there for the rest of her life. To stay she must sign a commitment and confess her sins. A difficult decision because she believed confession belonged to her and God alone. After a long painful struggle, she chooses to stay.

Peppered with humor, specific stories, the historical time-line, Lillie gives us a glimpse into the little known society. The reading of some of the rules even tickles the characters as they struggle to find a way to glean more members. A warm, tender, gentle story tends at times to become a little preachy with shades of lecturing, necessary perhaps to get in all of the vital information. However, this never lasts for long. Mildred breaks in with an antidote of specifics, prompting the two-act play to roll easily throughout history.

The talented cast gives flesh, blood, heart and soul to a community who furnished this country with many practical tools and ideas. Sallie Diamond’s costumes salted the atmosphere to perfection with the men dressed in black and the women wearing plain white blouses, simple blue skirts, and high-topped laced boots.

Humorous, insightful, thought-provoking, Hearts To God paints a colorful watercolor portrait of a people who tried desperately to live a belief system ingrained in their very being, which in turn brought about their demise. But what a legacy they left. Hearts To God captures the pain, struggle, hard work, dedication, fun, frolic, songs, and wild dancing of these ingenious minds that totally locked themselves out of the life they loved.

Hearts To God is Lillie’s first play. Hopefully, it won’t be his last.