LIBBY

SKALA

Performer Writer

BACK STAGE

FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, 2003

Lilia!

Reviewed By Mark Dundas Wood

The monodrama "Lilia!" opens with a recording of a radio

interview with Austrian-born architect-turned-actress Lilia

Skala.  She's just been nominated for an Oscar for her

role as the mother superior in the 1963 film "Lilies of the Field."

Then playwright-actress Libby Skala steps on stage as

Lilia (her real-life grandmother).

That the granddaughter so precisely captures the lilt

and cadence of her grandmother's voice is impressive. Even

more admirable is her ability to suggest -- in an hour or so --

the emotional complexities of the older woman.

At first, Lilia addresses the audience, describing how

she and her husband escaped the Nazis and came to America,

and how (despite her limited command of English) she landed

on Broadway after two years in New York.

Soon, though, Libby Skala assumes a second role: that

of her younger self. The intergenerational relationship quickly

becomes the focus of the piece. The shift in format is not

especially jarring, though, as the tension between the two

Skalas is more interesting dramatically than Lilia's Libby Skala in "Lilia!"

straightforward narration.        ___________________________

Lilia is depicted as a woman who strove to think only God-like thoughts. (Actually doing this becomes -- she says -- impossible after about two minutes.) While we never believe Lilia's moral compass was anything less than true, we also see that she was capable of a self-centeredness that, to a young girl, could be viewed as cruelty. This is especially pointed in a scene in which Lilia high-handedly demands that Libby surrender her favorite sweater to Grandma.

Lilia -- like her "Lilies" character -- believed staunchly that "all things are possible with God." In one exchange, though, she admits both that she is afraid of death and that, back in Europe, she had to quash thoughts of suicide. Brave of Libby Skala to include the sequence -- and wise, too: Piety seems much more palatable when it has a human face.

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