Singular sensation
Source: Tulsa World (Original Article)
Lynn Redgrave performs outstanding one-woman play
Mildred
Asher
lived a
most
ordinary
life.
What happened to her over
the course of her years wasn’t
a great deal different from
what many women of her
time and place experienced
 marriage, childbirth, death
of family members, regrets
large and small.
The only thing that others
might think of as special
about Mildred would be
her daughter, Rose, who
became an accomplished
actress and a lady with a
capital L, thanks to her husband.
But Rose was always
“Daddy’s girl.†Mildred’s
love was reserved for her
son, Mark, who like so
many young English boys
went away to war and never
returned.
No, what makes Mildred
Asher’s life extraordinary
is not the events, but the
way those events were told
 through the artistry of
actress Lynn Redgrave, who
presented her one-woman
play “Nightingale†on
Tuesday night at the Tulsa
Performing Arts Center.
Redgrave was in Tulsa for
one night only, presented
by the Oklahoma Center for
Poets and Writers. She presented
the play in “reader’s
theater†fashion  no sets
or costumes, no special
lighting, just a lectern with
the script and a stool  but
little more was needed
than
Redgrave’s voice to give life
and presence to a family of
characters.
“Nightingale†was inspired
by Redgrave’s grandmother,
and her discovery
that her grandmother’s
name had been scrubbed
from her headstone by time
and acid rain.
She went in search of that
grave in the wake of her
own divorce  “It’s over,â€Â
are the fi rst words spoken.
“Who am I, now that I am no
longer a wife?â€Â
As Redgrave never knew
her grandmother well, she
begins to invent a life, giving
her a new name  Mildred
Asher  and weaving in the few bits of information she
had heard about Drew Carey dvd her grandmother
into this imaginary
woman’s …continue reading