LIBBY

SKALA

Performer Writer

THE NEW YORK BLADE

JULY 25, 2003

Summer Productions Shine

Libby Skala channels her grandmother in 'Lilia'

by DAVID NOH

[The] high bar of performing excellence is more than met by Libby Skala, who, in "Lilia!," enacts her own grandmother, Viennese actress Lilia Skala, with an uncanny blend of transformative force and ravishing charm that is nothing less than uncanny.  Lilia was best known for her Oscar-nominated performance as a nun in "Lilies of the Field," but she was also the first woman to receive an architect's degree in Germany.  She starred with Max Reinhardt in Austria and on Broadway, was a Holocaust refugee and, through it all, was true to her personal and artistic principles, once turning down millions to act in a TV series, as "another boring nun."  (Not long after her Oscar nomination, she was shockingly discovered happily working in Lost and Found at City Center.)

On a bare stage, the actress creates her grandmother's entire world through the chimerical power of her voice and facial expressions.  The audience, mere inches away from her in the tiny space, is enthralled.

She delightfully evokes the rich mannerisms and irresistible coquettishness of other Viennese legends like Elisabeth Bergner and Luise Rainer;.  When I mentioned this to her, Skala confessed she had never seen either of these actresses, both of whom knew her grandmother.  Talk about acting as pure channeling!