The Ballad of the Sad Café

As his follow-up to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Albee chose in 1963 to adapt Southern Gothicist McCullers’s 1951 novella about an unrequited love triangle. Signal’s revival is infused with mournful inevitability. It’s also missing a sense of dramatic satisfaction that’s tough to attribute, but the fault seems to lie with the playwright.

In a tiny Georgia town in the 1930s, Miss Amelia runs her general store and moonshinery with an iron hand. Change is set in motion with the arrival of Lymon, a socially inept hunchback who claims to be her kin. Amelia takes a liking and takes him in; the resultant shift in her disposition serves to transform her store into the titular gathering place. But the return of the revenge-seeking husband she spurned years ago threatens to upend the happy arrangement.

Marra’s assured direction serves the text well. Scenic designer Melania Lancy once again proves adept at solving the puzzle of the Chopin basement with a handsomely rendered general store, and a live three-piece band backs a very capable cast led by Simone Roos’s dynamic, nuanced Amelia. Aaron Snook as Cousin Lymon delivers a physically impressive performance, though his vocal affectations cause some of his lines to be lost (a problem shared, to a lesser extent, by much of the cast). But Snook’s role also illustrates Albee’s failings: There’s no textual motivation for Lyman’s turning on Amelia; nor can we guess why Amelia married a man she didn’t love. McCullers herself might ascribe it to the caprice of the human heart, but on stage, we need a little more to go on.

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