`Dear Master' offers enriching theater

Special to The Journal

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT was suffering from uniformly negative reviews of his 1862 novel "Salammbo" when he wrote a letter to the one critic who praised the work literary giant George Sand. Flaubert, whose ideology was drastically different from that of his radical counterpart, wrote Sand a letter of appreciation, thus instigating an extraordinary correspondence between the two which lasted until Sand's death a dozen years later.

The letters of Flaubert and Sand from 1863 to 1876, along with various biographies and autobiographies, serve as the basis for playwright Dorothy Bryant's exquisite "Dear Master," which the Milwaukee Chamber Theatre premiered Saturday at the Studio Theatre of the Broadway Theatre Center. The production runs through Jan. 29.

"Dear Master" is the third epistolary two-character play performed by Ruth Schudson and Montgomery Davis, and under Jonathan Smoots' compact direction the hour and 35 minutes is enriching and riveting. The indomitable George Sand of Schudson, aging and infirm as her country advances toward war, is a marked contrast to the tiresome image of the writer as a young, carousing cross-dresser.

Schudson triumphs in grand moments where Sand proudly comes to the defense of womanhood and the social underclasses in opposition to Flaubert's chauvinist and elitist views. Davis plays up the humor in his role as the cynical, lonely Flaubert, but the actor's sing-song style of elocution, while appropriate for lighter soliloquies, robs the character of much of its poignancy during darker moments.

R.H. Graham's set is cleverly divided into two ornate interiors, with pianist Richard Carsey occasionally visible behind a black center screen while playing compositions by Sand's famous ex-boyfriend, Frederic Chopin.

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