Sewing Lessons

Strangefruit Theater Ensemble's adaptation of a surrealistic novel, The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, features two old ladies named Marion and Carmella who share an odd, sweet, aging-bohemian friendship enlivened by their ripe imaginations. Carrington herself was lifelong friends with the painter Remedios Varo -- they lived in Mexico during and after World War II -- and the friendship in the novel is a comic, dreamlike impression of the artists' friendship as ancient ladies. There's one plot-point to speak of: Carmella gives Marion a glass ear-trumpet to ease her advancing deafness, and Marion overhears relatives plotting to put her in a home. The rest of the show is a bizarre but colorful fantasia set in an English garden, a forest, and Marion's bedroom. Will Waghorn plays a butler in a hat made from the top of a heating vent, decanting absinthe from a cart hung with buzz-saw blades; Temple Crocker plays Marion, with a mop-head for hair; and Annie Kunjappy plays the intellectual, pipe-smoking Carmella, as well as a forest-dweller named Virginia Fur (who has an affair with a boar). Unlike a lot of recent, original plays -- Gogol, say -- Sewing Lessons is odd but perfectly controlled; all three actors have a tight and vivid sense of rhythm. But it also feels delicate rather than stirring, like an attractive piece of crystal on the shelf.