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The Speed Queen Show Business, August 14, 2007 Review by Rachel Royan Sex, drugs, fast cars and fast food set the scene for Anne Stockton’s solo show The Speed Queen, which follows death row inmate Marjorie Standiford as she spends her last hours recounting the violent events that led to her sentence. In her sparse Oklahoma City cell, Marjorie reveals her side of the story into a tape recorder courtesy of the writer (presumably Stephen King) who has purchased the rights to her gory account. “Stephen” has provided her with a stack of questions he would like her to answer, and Marjorie slowly makes her way though them, giggling as she reminisces about how she met Lamont, her husband and partner-in-crime. Their hedonistic natures propel them into a rapid and heavy relationship of drugs, sex and car shows, which just as quickly, turns into a pregnancy and marriage. Arrested for possession, Marjorie spends some time in prison where she meets Natalie, who becomes the third partner in this crime spree. Speaking smugly of their sexual encounters, Marjorie’s voice nonetheless holds real affection for Natalie, adding a creepily incestuous tone to their relationship. The situation becomes further complicated when Natalie moves in with Marjorie and Lamont and begins helping Lamont with his drug dealing business. The theft of borrowed money for a drug deal leads to Lamont’s toe being butchered off, an act that leads the trio (and their son Gainey in the backseat) to Route 66 looking for money. According to Marjorie, it was this simple need for cash that precipitated the ensuing mass murders, including the torching of an elderly couple, the massacre of employees in a fast food joint and the shooting of a cop. The murder spree ends in Lamont’s death. Based on Stewart O’Nan’s 1997 novel of the same name, Stockton’s adaptation paints a vivid picture of violence, self-indulgence and stupidity. Stockton’s anti-hero is both compelling and engaging; Marjorie is adamant that she was simply the getaway girl, but her nonchalant remarks offer chilling insight into her lack of remorse. Director Austin Pendleton uses the space to full advantage and, along with Stockton’s performance, creates a solid portrayal of a desensitized society and wasted youth.
Broadway Veteran Pendleton to Direct The Speed Queen for Midtown International Theatre Festival Playbill, 20 June, 2007 By Adam Hetrick Actor-director-playwright Austin Pendleton will direct Anne Stockton's adaptation of Stewart O'Nan's The Speed Queen as part of the Midtown International Theatre Festival. According to press notes, The Speed Queen centers around "Marjorie Standford, [who] is on Death Row in Oklahoma. Now she is trying to set the record straight by answering questions posed to her by American's most popular horror novelist about her wild life of sex, drugs, and crime that has led to what may be her imminent execution." Austin Pendleton's numerous directing credits include the 1981 revival of The Little Foxes, Spoils of War and the recent Pearl Theatre Company's revival of Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic. Pendleton made his Broadway debut in 1964 as Motel in Fiddler on the Roof, and his most recent Broadway credits include The Diary of Anne Frank, Grand Hotel as well as The Public's Mother Courage and Her Children in Central Park opposite Meryl Streep.
Austin Pendleton to Direct MITF's The Speed Queen BroadwayWorld.com, Tuesday, June 19, 2007 The Midtown International Theatre Festival will present The Speed Queen, based on the novel of the same name by Stewart O'Nan, adapted and performed by Anne Stockton and directed by Austin Pendleton. In the play, "Marjorie Standiford, an original if not reliable narrator tells the story of her wild life of sex, drugs, and crime which includes the murder of 8 people. While waiting for what may be her imminent execution on Oklahoma's death row, Marjorie attempts to set the record straight as she answers questions posed to her by American's most popular horror novelist who hopes to create a best selling book based on her story," state press notes. Playwright and performer Stockton (American Caesar, Weekend with Bob, "Guiding Light") has appeared in the show at New Jersey Repertory Theater in Long Branch, New Jersey and at the Culture Project's Women Center Stage Festival. Director Pendleton also an actor and playwright received a 2007 Drama Desk award for A Renaissance Man of the American Theater. His third play, Orson's Shadow premiered at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago and enjoyed an off-Broadway run. He directed the Broadway production of The Little Foxes with Elizabeth Taylor, the world premieres of Say Goodnight, Gracie and The Runner Stumbles and last season's Toys in the Attic at the Pearl Theater. He has also directed at the Steppenwolf Theatre and the Williamstown Theatre Festival. He was the Artistic Director of The Circle Repertory Theatre in New York. As an actor he has appeared in original Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof and the Broadway revival of Diary of Anne Frank and The Little Foxes, among others. He has made many Off-Broadway, regional, tv and film apperances. His first published play Booth, starred Frank Langella and played at the Long Wharf Theatre as well as Off-Broadway. His second play Uncle Bob, was originally produced at the Mint Theatre in New York. Novelist O'Nan is an award-winning fiction writer whose works include Snow Angels, The Names Of The Dead, The Speed Queen, A World Away, A Prayer For The Dying, Everyday People, and the story collection in The Walled City. In 1996, Granta named him one of America's Best Young Novelists. He wrote The Speed Queen in 66 days while living on Route 66. The production team includes Stage Manager Adrian Wattenmaker, dialect coach Sam Chwat and festival representative June Rachelson-Ospa.
The Speed Queen: A Fast Paced 85 Minutes of Engrossing Storytelling Talkin' Broadway By Bob Rendell The Speed Queen plays like the terse, exciting Hollywood crime programmers which were often sleeker and more entertaining than the main features which they supported in the double feature movie going days of my too far off childhood. You'll likely recognize the essential elements of the story. It is told by Marjorie as she awaits her final walk (or a reprieve) in an Oklahoma jail. As she snorts speed apparently provided by a sympathetic jailer, Marjorie is talking into a recorder, answering questions submitted on cards by an author who is paying her for the rights to her story. The money will provide a little nest egg for her 10-year-old son Gainey. Unlike the B-movie melodramas evoked here, The Speed Queen is a monodrama, and only Marjorie appears corporeally. Thus, it is up to the audience to picture the other squalid players and their victims, the spare black and white settings, the cars speeding down highways to nowhere, the erotic entanglements, and the vicious and bloody criminal behavior of the protagonists. And we do see the story vividly unfold in the camera of our minds courtesy of the richly descriptive, vivid and fast paced adaptation of Stewart O'Nan's novel of the same title by Anne Stockton. In this respect, the play calls to mind the pleasurable boon to the imagination that radio drama once provided. The clear presence here of elements of both B-pictures and old time radio make for a pleasing retro experience. Marjorie begins by telling us that she met Lamont, her husband and partner in crime, when he drove into a gas station where she was working. It is a love at first sight tale of two junkies whose pleasure together derives from taking hard drugs, hot and heavy fornication and attending car shows. In quick time, Marjorie becomes pregnant. When her newborn arrives, Marjorie has to give up her gig at the gas station. However, she services Lamont's druggie customers from their apartment. Marjorie convincingly asserts that she did not use illegal drugs during her pregnancy. After giving birth, she again gets heavily into the use of drugs. At first, she skims from each packet sold. As her habit increases, she increases prices without telling Lamont in order to cover the costs of drugs diverted for her own use. Arrested for possession after an auto accident, Marjorie is sentenced to a minimum security prison. Here she meets Natalie. Their relationship is both sexual and sisterly. When Natalie is released, and needs a place to stay, she moves in with Lamont and Marjorie. Natalie helps with the drug sales, and, before long, adds Lamont to her sexual menu. Following the theft of the money which he had borrowed to finance a major drug deal, Lamont is viciously assaulted by the loan sharks, and the trio accompanied by 2-year-old Gainey head off onto Route 66 where they embark on a murderous, bloody and stupidity-laden crime spree, and Marjorie repays Natalie's betrayal. As adapter, Anne Stockton, has so vividly drawn the off stage characters that I had the passing (albeit ridiculous) thought of reviewing the roles of Lamont and Natalie. Adaptor Anne Stockton also performs the role of Marjorie under the never static, tightly wound direction of Austin Pendleton. She brings variety, vigor and conviction to her portrayal. Marjorie is the kind of person who is able to act in a stone cold, utterly vicious and horrific manner because her all consuming desire to satisfy her own wants is inextricably entwined with her inability to have any concern or compassion for others. In attempting to humanize Marjorie, Stockton may be a tad too engaging. On the other hand, sad experience has taught the world that monsters can be frightfully engaging. Certainly, Marjorie's horrendous behavior is clear enough here. The clean, sleek prison office setting is by Jessica Parks. Marjorie's new looking, sharply pressed green prison jumpsuit is uncredited. There is a dialect coach, so I'll assume Stockton's near Southern sounding strong regional accent is accurate. Marjorie mentions that she acquired the soubriquet The Speed Queen because of her high speed car run from the police along Route 99. Another apparent reason is her heavy, long term usage of the illicit drug known as speed. Stewart O'Nan, on whose work the play is based, is quoted as saying that Stockton's "captured Marjorie's innocence and insanity." This reviewer cannot see Marjorie as (an) innocent in any sense of the word, and is not clear on her precise mental condition. What I look for in portrayals of people who commit unspeakable, inhumane crimes is an understanding of what causes them (and not others) to deviate from normative behavior. I rarely, if ever, find it. The fault may lie in the eye of this beholder. Actress and adaptor Anne Stockton may have us traveling in B-movie territory, but she certainly is giving us an entertaining and fast paced ride.
Anne Stockton shows she's the "Queen" of denial Asbury Park Press on 10/31/06 By Tom Chesek With her red hair, chemically turbocharged energy and rapid-fire inflections, the woman in the prison-issue jumpsuit seems almost like an angular, more intense version of Reba McEntire. It's as if TV Reba converted the kitchen to a meth lab and finally did away with her cloying sitcom clan. The lady on the stage of New Jersey Repertory Company is Anne Stockton, star and sole inhabitant of "The Speed Queen," now being staged at NJ Rep's Long Branch playhouse. Like any other full-length fiction transmuted into a dramatic piece, "Queen" (adapted by Stockton from Stewart O'Nan's novel of the same name) presents the playwright with some hard choices as far as what to retain from the source work. Stockton is working here with a tight, fast-paced, intimate work whose central device — a narrative delivered by a convicted serial killer for the benefit of a famous horror novelist — seems a natural fit for an edgy and economically scaled theatrical troupe. Civil Cold War As Marjorie Standiford — an Oklahoma gal whose travels in entry-level crime and drug addiction eventually lead her to death row — Stockton addresses a stack of index-card inquiries from best-selling scaremeister "Stephen," speaking her answers into a tape recorder. Relating the details of her involvement in an interstate killing spree — and blandly maintaining her innocence throughout — Standiford/Stockton tells of her enchantment with drug-dealing ne'er-do-well Lamont, her parallel involvement with former jailmate Natalie and the circumstances that drove the unlikely threesome (Marjorie's baby actually makes four) to hit Route 66 in a bloody road trip. It results in the deaths of a state trooper and a couple of fast-food clerks, among others. As channeled by East Coast actress (and practicing psychiatrist) Stockton from the words of eminent literary type O'Nan, the plains and straightaways of flyover country seem a dead-eyed place where vintage Plymouth Road Runners roar past chain eateries and tired motels; a place where valuables are stashed inside Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes. Whether it's a chainsaw-massacre horrorfest or the kinder, gentler criminality of the film "Raising Arizona," any time that a bunch of perceived "elites" comment upon the ways of red-state America, it does little to soothe the ongoing Civil Cold War we seem to have gotten ourselves into. Austin empowers Director Austin Pendleton has shepherded "The Speed Queen" from workshops and readings to countless hours of rehearsals, right on through to this first formal "full" production. His invisible role in the proceedings is every bit as crucial as any of the offstage players in the condemned Marjorie's life story. Still, this is Stockton's passionately conceived project in the end, and the performer-playwright is the show, attacking the material with laser focus and a knowing sense of the currents that course beneath the most "ordinary" American lives. If "The Speed Queen" is any indicator, a Stockton presentation detailing her real-life career experiences in psychiatry and law enforcement would be a hot and harrowing ticket.
The Speed Queen CurtainUp.com By Simon Saltzman I was a difficult person then, before I accepted Jesus. - Marjorie Time on earth appears to be running out for convicted murderer Marjorie Standiford (Anne Stockton), who is spending the last hours on Death Row in an Oklahoma prison talking into a tape recorder. While awaiting her scheduled execution, her last meal, or, better yet, a possible last minute stay of execution, Marjorie has agreed to answer questions posed by a celebrated author who is going to write about the crimes she has committed, her drug addiction, her wild sex life and other things that will help the public understand who she is and why she has done what she has done.
Not The Retiring Type: It's full 'Speed' ahead for Pendleton Star-Ledger on Friday, October 27, 2006 By Peter Filichia NEW JERSEY STAGE There aren't many people who open a play in New Jersey and in New York in the same week. Not that Austin Pendleton will be in two places at once. Given that he's finished directing "The Speed Queen," opening Friday at the New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch, he needn't be on the premises. "Not that a director's work is ever done," he says ruefully. When the curtain goes up around 8 p.m., Pendleton will be at the theater known as 59 East 59th Street, which is also its Manhattan address. There, he'll play his fourth preview of "The Sunset Limited," a drama by Cormac McCarthy. Pendleton portrays an atheist who plans to commit suicide on a train platform, but is rescued by another man. And he turned 66 in March. "I never think of retiring. Never," he says. "I know very few actors who do. When Helen Hayes retired, three or four years later she was saying, 'I wish I hadn't done that.' So I do as much as I can." His involvement with "The Speed Queen" began some years back, when he was introduced to actress Anne Stockton. Three years ago, she told him she was adapting Stewart O'Nan's 1997 novel about a murderess who wants to tell her side of the story to an author very much like Stephen King. Because Stockton planned to star in it, too, she asked Pendleton to coach her. Pendleton teaches acting at the HB Studios and the New School, not far from his New York City home. "So I said maybe," he says. "I'd never heard of the novel, so I read it, and it knocked me out. Then I read Anne's script, and I thought she captured it. I said, 'Okay, I'll coach.' That led to my actually directing the play -- though I honestly don't remember if she asked me to do it, or I volunteered myself." On Broadway, he's directed both European classics (Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman") to American ones (Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes"). He is, however, better known as a performer, albeit one of those actors who many recognize by his small, wispy frame, and looks that he describes as "geeky." He's played many a milquetoast, in "The Front Page" (1974), "The Muppet Movie" (1979) and "My Cousin Vinny" (1992). The first chance to direct came in 1965, while he was performing in "Fiddler on the Roof." He was the original Motel, the bridegroom who goes from scared rabbit to mensch. Pendleton's mother ran a community theater in their hometown of Warren, Ohio, and she asked him to direct her as Amanda in "The Glass Menagerie." He had to leave "Fiddler" to do it. "I went without another acting job for months, and yet, it was worth it. If I were forced to choose among the three disciplines, though, I'd taking acting," he says. Three disciplines? "When I was 50, I promised myself I'd write a play," he says. Since penning "Booth," about the esteemed acting family with an assassin in its ranks, Pendleton wrote two plays that had off-Broadway productions. In 2001, "Uncle Bob" told of a gay uncle and his homophobic nephew. "Orson's Shadow," which played most of last year, dealt with the time when Orson Welles directed Laurence Olivier in a production of Ionesco's "Rhinoceros." Pendleton didn't have to imagine what Welles was like. "I worked with him in 'Catch-22,'" he says of the 1970 film version of Joseph Heller's novel. "He was nice to me personally, but very difficult to a lot of people. Only later did I realize that he was in a lot of pain because he wasn't directing that movie. He ruminated on that a lot in front of all of us, making self-deprecating remarks that showed it was eating away at him that his career had waned." He pauses and shakes his head slowly. "It's another reason I won't retire," he says. "I'm still getting the chance to do it." Peter Filichia writes about New Jersey theater for The Star-Ledger. He may be reached at pfilichia@starledger.com or (973) 392-5995.
THE "QUEEN" ANNE An actress-playwright and a star director speed-the-play to NJ Rep Asbury Park Press on 10/26/06 By Tom Chesek At a time when yet another movie about Truman Capote and his fascination with capital convict Perry Smith sheds new light upon the "In Cold Blood" murder case, the folks at New Jersey Repertory Company in Long Branch are inviting audiences to take a more intimate look at the relationship between the chronicler and the condemned. Set on death row in an Oklahoma penitentiary, "The Speed Queen" is a one-woman show. Inmate Marjorie Standiford speaks into a tape recorder, reflecting upon her career as one of drive-through America's infamous "Sonic Killers" — and how her relationship with her speed-dealing husband Lamont and lover Natalie led her to robbery, murder and the brink of imminent execution. As she makes clear to her unseen interviewer, who just happens to be "America's most popular horror novelist" (the King to her Queen, if you will), it's an attempt to "set the record straight" in response to Natalie's best-selling tell-all. A tour de force As Marjorie, Anne Stockton (a busy stage and television performer who also is a practicing psychiatrist) already is poised to deliver what's being described as a bona fide tour de force performance. As if that weren't enough, she's also the playwright — having adapted the script from a novel by award-winning fiction writer Stewart O'Nan ("Snow Angels," "A Prayer for the Dying"). According to Stockton, "When I came to read the book, I could not put it down. I immediately found the main character intriguing, contradictory, funny, and shocking. . . . I quickly began to think that the book would easily lend itself to a one person play. "I am often attracted to characters whose life experience is far from my own," the actor says. "I am drawn to understanding and then playing characters who exhibit extreme behavior." Another way in which this medical professional (and professional player) touches upon extremes of behavior is in her sideline gig as an "actor/trainer" with the NYPD Hostage Negotiation Team — a course in which her regular role-play improvisations include "a woman in the middle of a manic episode, and a paranoid former postal worker." It's a unique experience that Stockton regards as "an incredible workout as an actor," adding that "portraying these disorders also has assisted me in understanding them as a psychiatrist." For "Speed Queen" the novel to morph into "Speed Queen" the solo performance piece, Stockton had to first obtain the rights. She then set about deleting some of the minor characters, as well as editing certain situations and events described in the book — a process about which she maintains, "My director and I made these difficult choices on the basis of what best served the forward movement of the piece and created suspense." That collaborator, by the way, is none other than Austin Pendleton, the Tony-lauded director ("The Little Foxes" with Elizabeth Taylor), award-winning author ("Orson's Shadow"), instantly recognizable character actor ("The Muppet Movie," along with some vivid appearances on recent "Law & Order" franchises) and eminent educator. "It has been a great privilege to work with him," says Stockton of Pendleton, who has been affiliated with the project through several workshop and festival productions. "Austin's contribution to the development of the piece has been huge — shaping the script, clarifying the arc of the piece, and of course staging and developing the behavior and nuances of the character." |
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