Glassheart by Megan Reichelt

New blood pumps through the fragile heart of a beloved, centuries-old tale

by Megan Reichelt

“The latest incarnation of Oedipus, the continued romance of Beauty and the Beast, stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, waiting for the traffic light to change.” –Joseph Campbell

From its inception, Rorschach Theatre in Washington DC has been exploring the idea of undying love. The Scarlet Letter gave us the chance to wrestle with the forbidden love between Hester and Dimmesdale. Living Dead in Denmark tackled literal undead romance and what can be forgiven after death as Hamlet and Ophelia clash during a zombie uprising. The Minotaur showed how even love preordained by myth is not always the best path. In our newest play, Glassheart by Reina Hardy, we explore a love story so treasured and so often retold that it is stitched into the very fabric of our culture: the story of Beauty and the Beast.

Even before Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve wrote the first published version of the tale in 1756, the idea of a beast and his beautiful bride reverberated throughout history: Cupid and Psyche from Greece, East of the Sun and West of the Moon from Norway, the Monkey Son-in-Law from Japan, and many more. In all of these tales, a woman must live with a beast, often to save her family, and over time she comes to love him.

It is a story that has been adapted over and over again, changing its form or symbolism or time period to fit the culture, but it never changes that essential core. Fairy tales have a way of speaking directly to our blood, giving shape to the patterns we repeat throughout our lives and throughout time. A woman falls in love with a man that others do not think deserves her love. A man has such self-loathing that he sees himself unlovable. Two people are paired together through outside powers and must navigate each other until they finally click. We feel the truth in fairy tales because they have been tossed and smoothed through the waves of history, wearing them down to that emotional core that speaks to all ages. Author Catheryne E. Valente calls them “the best-edited stories of all time... boiled down, espresso-like stories that go straight to the back of your reptile brain."

Glassheart recognizes that. This story carries the weight of all the Beauty and the Beasts that have come before. We know how the story is supposed to go. And yet Beauty has not come. After almost 500 years of waiting for her, the Beast’s one remaining servant, a devoted lamp, uproots the reluctant Beast, sells the castle, and moves him to Chicago in a desperate attempt to find a woman to break the curse. The lamp struggles to keep him

moving and hoping and trying as the Beast sinks further into despair until one day, a lost cat brings a young woman to their door.

Reina Hardy’s Glassheart has the beautiful duality of showing both the grandeur of the fairy tale and the intimate reflection of the tale in a modern life. On the one hand, we have the Beast and his magical servant, the rose bush (a last precious vestige of his old home), enchanted dwellings, the witch, the entrapment, the rejected proposal, the waltz, the desire for home and the promise the Beast will die. On the other hand, we have a sad and lonely recluse in the apartment downstairs who finds a friend in the new girl who has just moved in and is looking for her cat. As one of the characters, a landlady with a taste for gingerbread and children, says “Humans… simply refuse to see” the more extraordinary natures of the fairy tale creatures that walk among them. To that end, director Lee Liebeskind made the choice to show the Beast as a man. No fur, no horns, no scales. The human audience sees only the man, and the Beast is inside. In this way, the audience gets to see both the fairy tale and the human parallel in every moment of the play.

There is a further element that makes this adaptation unique. Most versions of Beauty and the Beast, fairy tale or human, focus on the love between the two title characters. The other characters of the tale stand on the edge of their limelight. Yet Reina Hardy has refocused the tale a little to encompass the loyal, loving Lamp. The Lamp’s devotion to the Beast and her determination to break the curse forces the Beast out of his comfort zone, allowing him to take the steps towards salvation.

Our beloved little Lamp’s knowledge of the world comes from the beautiful stories she has heard the Beast read as she stood over his shoulder and gave him light: fairy tales where everyone gets a happy ending. Yet as modern, human life permeates her story more and more, she realizes that not all stories have happy endings and she must make a terrible decision. This dance between the fairy tale and the human is reflected throughout the play. It questions which is the most valuable: the mundane routine or the extraordinary, though risky and painful, experience? The patterns of fairy tale echo through our lives: a young, abused girl who decides to take destiny into her own hands and rise to success is Cinderella; a woman who sacrifices her happiness for the man she loves is the Little Mermaid; an enterprising young man is Jack. These patterns connect us to those who came before. They give structure and familiarity to our lives. And yet, Glassheart underlines a very important element to human life that these comfortable patterns often make people forget: everyone has a choice. Glassheart is running from January 17-February 16th at the Atlas Performing Arts Center in DC.