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By CARL COON
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Saturday evening an enthusiastic audience attended a preview of Julie Portman’s latest autobiographical one-woman play, "My Sister’s Sister.”
We started with high expectations, and the performance exceeded them. The lighting and special effects were innovative and effective. Paul Reisler’s music, which he performed in the background as Julie's story unfolded, was entirely original; it strongly and seamlessly supported the narration. And Julie’s performance was downright spectacular.
How to describe an hour and a half that contained so many memorable episodes, each quite different,but bound together by the fact they all were from Julie’s own past experiences, viewed from her present perspective?
We started with evocations from . her childhood, were jerked into ugly scenes of race riots in Boston, then with barely a pause we found ourselves studying Kathakali dance forms in South India, only to return home to the grim reality of a schizophrenic younger sister.
Throughout this kaleidoscopic journey Julie dazzled us with a pyrotechnic display of her acting and narrating skills, while raising questions that were mainly left unanswered. Was there anything in her sister’s childhood behavior that foreshadowed the tragedy that befell her later on? What about those race riots in Boston? Julie formed an acting company, half black and half white, that dramatized our national racial trauma in over three hundred performances, then finally woke up one morning not having nightmares about them, and went on to other things. Is
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