Show reviewed: Dear Emma

Playwright: Rhonda Carlson

Date saw the show: November 2, 2007
Place saw the show: Olathe, Kansas
Company: MidAmerica Nazarene University Departments of Theatre & Music
Principal Leads: Gail Burney, Taylor Bottles, Bailey Brock, Michael Hephner, Carrie Conant, Shira Wedekind
Stage Director: Cindy Peterson

Musical Director: Mary Jane Wilder-Hardee

4 Stars

Reviewed by: Deborah Ground Buckner

Sixteen-year-old Emma Dillon left her home and family in Virginia to marry Mark, a Yankee, and live in Connecticut. Distance and lack of money for travel kept the family separated throughout the following years, but letters kept them close. Emma saved them all, letters from her parents, Had and Henry Dillon, her brother, John, and sister, Sarah, a cousin and friends from the town. The letters were found in a trunk in Oklahoma in the 1980s, then passed along to Rhonda Carlson, a professor at the University of Southern Maine. Dear Emma, a musical based on the stories told in the letters, is the result.

The play opens as Emma's great-niece, Mary Lou Hylton, is in the attic reading a treasure trove of old letters and becoming acquainted with her ancestors in the process. Emma, the important character who binds together the stories told in the letters, is never seen in the play. No letters from Emma are read. Yet, the play vividly reveals the story of a young girl, traveling far from home, experiencing homesickness, loneliness, and love for her husband and children. The people she left behind are brought to life through the letters they wrote. Each character speaks only the words he or she once wrote to Emma. Characters emerge from the letters.

Early letters reveal the family's hurt and disappointment arising from Emma's decision to move so far away and to marry a Yankee. All too soon, this division becomes even more apparent as the country erupts in war between the North and South. Emma's younger brother, John (portrayed by Michael Hephner) becomes a soldier of the Confederate States of America. He often writes of his longing for letters from his family, and talks of how difficult it is to receive letters from Emma in the North. He confesses, “I fear I may meet her husband someday” in battle, bringing home clearly how families were divided by the War Between the States. He admits he grows “tired of this war.” News comes to his family of his death in battle.

A family friend, Pres, serving as a solider of the South, loses his wife and children to diphtheria while he is away. Emma's sister, Sarah, is widowed during the war. A friend of Emma's, who also married a Yankee, suffers the same loss and returns to her home in the South. Through her letters, there is a glimpse of the life Emma must have, enjoying the greater conveniences of Northern living and facing the hardship of leaving family behind to follow her heart.

In the aftermath of the war, the family's letters tell of the difficulties of living under martial law, of the lack of money, of poor crops. Emma's father, Henry, sings “I'm a good old Rebel” accepting his fate without apologies: “I don't want no pardon for anything I've done.”

Although the letters reveal the family's suffering through one of the most difficult chapters of American history, not every moment is dark. Emma's cousin, Rosa Lane (beautifully portrayed by Liz Regier), writes gossipy letters of all “the dirt in the county.” She tells of one friend who is getting so fat--“soo-ey”--that “she'll survive if ever there is a famine in the South.” The widowed friend Pres turns his attentions to Emma's widowed sister, Sarah. Sarah writes to Emma of this courtship, mentioning an item in the newspaper Emma might have seen (that Sarah suspects was planted there by “our cousin Rosa Lane”) but insists she will not marry, because she is not in love. Before long, Pres is also writing to Emma as “Dear Sister.” Once, as Emma's mother writes a long letter detailing all the ailments and deaths in the county, her father closes with a note of his own, beginning “Now that your mother has shared all the mirthful news . . . .”

An attempted light moment features a friend, Indiana, who married a wealthy man and moved to North Carolina. Telling of her travels, she laments of “The Piano in the Room Across the Hall.” It is a clever, humorous song, and Carrie Conant in the role of Indiana sings it well. But it doesn't belong in the play, not unless it is followed by a letter from Rosa Lane announcing Indiana has just gone insane. Since that didn't happen, it is simply meaningless fluff that should be cut from future productions. The rest of the music, original songs interspersed with songs of the Civil War and traditional hymns, provides a haunting accompaniment to the stories revealed.

Dear Emma gives a fascinating view of history as seen through the lives of real people. It is a reminder in a day of cell phones and e-mails of the importance of the lasting words of letters. What record of daily life will be discovered one hundred years from now?

This was the Midwestern premiere of the play which, though unpublished, has had stagings in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Boston.