On May 29, 1897, Mildred Brewster, age 20, and Anna Wheeler, 17,
strolled together under rainy skies through a residential Vermont
neighborhood. The New York Times described what followed, in an article
bearing the headline "Montpelier Love Tragedy": "As they were passing
along a by-path, which leads to the boarding house whence Miss Wheeler
was going, Miss Brewster suddenly drew a revolver and fired a shot
almost point-blank into the side of Miss Wheeler's head."
The next day's follow-up piece reported that Miss Brewster had asked the doctor if Miss Wheeler was alive. "When told she was not, she closed her eyes, but said nothing," it read.
During the last year, Bellows Falls residents Denny Partridge and Steve Friedman — both veteran stage actors, playwrights and directors — have been discovering the meaning in Miss Brewster's silence. Through intensive research that took them down a labyrinthine path into dusty archives, genealogical shadows and unexpected fountains of information thousands of miles away, they pieced together the before, during and after of what was a disturbing and sensational crime.
The fruits of Partridge and Friedman's investigative efforts converge in "Mildred Taken Crazy," a compact, complex stage production which has them shouldering several dozen roles between them as they sew together facts, speculations and quandaries that have swirled around this compelling case for more than a century.
The play — which runs Friday and Saturday at Main Street Arts in Saxtons River and the Jamaica Town Hall on June 1 — distills their historical detective work down to a mere 40 minutes in a nimbly orchestrated amalgam of potent drama, dark levity, heartfelt song and vivid characters.
While the project has been a monumental undertaking for Partridge and Friedman, it is also a continuation of what's been a highly successful partnership that includes more than 60 productions, original and classic, performed around in the globe, starting with helping to put the San Francisco Mime Troupe on the map in the 1970s. Various honors, such as Fulbrights, NEA grants and fellowships, an Obie and an AUDELCO, populate their heady resumes, as do distinguished institutions like The New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater, Edinburgh's Film Festival and professorships at venerated universities including Barnard, Columbia, NYU and Vassar.
Partridge spent much of her childhood in Vermont and relocating here a few years ago has allowed the two to be nearer to family while still expending their creative energy in what they consider to be fertile artistic ground. Founding Mud Time Theatre last year — whose name comes from Frost's poem "Two Tramps in Mud Time" — they first staged "Mildred Taken Crazy" to great response in Europe last fall and, performing it now for Vermont audiences, are finding the experience even more fulfilling.
In a recent conversation, I asked how they came to discover Mildred Brewster and why they chose to construct an entire play around her.
"A crime is always worth a try, given the best of literature, the Greeks, etc.," Friedman said. "We were looking for Vermont crimes that felt like they could make a play and started going through old newspapers at the library. Somewhere I remembered that an old friend in New York had a poster on her kitchen wall that was the Brewster murder case."
"We'd seen it a million times," Partridge said. "The Montpelier Daily Record had distributed those posters in 1898 and it was a triangle murder case that had always seemed intriguing."
They delved into the coverage of the day, finding morsels of information in several East Coast dailies. "We sat ourselves down in front of microfilm and got to know the press of that time — the story, the players, the ingredients."
"At the trial," Partridge said, "there was standing room only. The jury was all men and the trial was attended by women — sobbing women — and her brothers and her father, who put up everything he had for a classy defense lawyer. It's a real women's story that could describe a woman's experience today — it's undiminished and still resonates."
"She was acquitted for reasons of insanity," Friedman said. "It was a pioneering use of that defense. She was put away in a Waterbury insane asylum but, under Nixon, a law came in that said no medical records from psychiatric hospitals can ever be released."
"Her records are sealed," Partridge said. "We found as much as we could and also what happened after she left the asylum. We searched her and had great help from some terrific people."
The Vermont Archives and a university library in another state opened doors to Mildred's life thereafter that Partridge and Friedman never thought they'd find. "They gave us the research keys and we found Mildred thousands of miles from Vermont," Partridge said.
As is often the case in research projects involving human interest stories, unexpected well-springs of meaning and insight emerged. Three very pleasant such surprises were seated in the front row at a recent staging of "Mildred Taken Crazy" in Montpelier: the great, great, grandnieces of Brewster's victim, Anna Wheeler, had heard of the play and were curious about how it might approach the sorrowful topic with which their lives have been inexorably entwined.
"They wanted to come and hear the other side," Partridge said. "They're lovely women and still have the quilt that Anna had been working on when she was killed — half made."
The esteem that Partridge and Friedman possess for those who have been touched by these events that took place so long ago is palpable, as is their cognizance that it's human nature for people to find tales of anguish somehow captivating. "It's an element of honor and of gossip," Partridge said, "the way certain misdeeds and crimes circulate through everybody's mouths and become the texture and the tissue of what they live on."
Their investigation into the circumstances that preceded the shooting and what transpired thereafter led them to fresh information with regard to Brewster's own demise. "We found Mildred's death certificate," Partridge said, "and other things on it that were relevant to who she was, like a full circle."
"The attraction of the story partly reminds me of a quote by Susan Sontag," Friedman said. "'I know it's art if I don't understand it.' Mildred's story is ultimately like this. A lot seems obvious and familiar yet at the heart of it there's something mysterious that pulled me in and made me want to spend time with her, the way you want to spend time with people who move or intrigue you."
When asked if the title implies that Mildred truly was taken crazy or if rumor reigned back then, the pair's response reveals the depth of their inquiries and attendant quest to establish and expose truth.
"In the trial they were arguing on her family heritage," Friedman said, "since mental illness was in her family and she was given to extremely strange behavior early in life. Everyone who knew her said she was a very strange person. That's part of what's inscrutable about it, the mystery of the motive — what was there in it for her?"
"I go back and forth every day with this," Partridge said. "It also doesn't mean she didn't know what she was doing when she pulled a gun out and shot this woman in the head."
As to what these seasoned actors seek to impart in "Mildred Taken Crazy" — with its stark, single-chair set and compressed reportage of their rigorous research into five decades of history — Partridge is certain.
"The best response is if someone leaves saying 'I just don't know what to think'. We're not trying to tell people what to think, we're trying to give the story life so the thinking is their work."
Reservations: MSA 869-2960
Online: www.mudtimetheatre.com
Annie: annieguyoncommunications.com
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