An extraordinary play about two remarkable women

PETER FELDMAN

Actresses Shirley Johnston and Lynita Crofford bring this unique personality’s life, love, and creativity to the fore in Gertrude Stein and a Companion at the Auto & General Theatre on the Square in Sandton, co-produced with Daphne Kuhn.

Being gay, Stein chose to leave her native country to settle in more liberal minded Paris, where she met Alice B. Toklas, fell in love, and embarked on a relationship that lasted her entire life.

Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, in 1874 to wealthy German-Jewish immigrants. At the age of three, her family moved first to Vienna and then Paris. They returned to America in 1878, and settled in Oakland, California.

Stein and Toklas were beacons of enlightenment in an age when lesbianism was frowned upon and during a period when they bravely faced the Nazi’s Vichy occupation of the country.

She hosted a Paris salon where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, and Henri Matisse, would meet.

Gertrude Stein and a Companion is evocative and witty, exploring the extraordinary relationship between Stein, the American modernist author and poet, and Toklas.

Their relationship is brought vividly to life on stage. The play was written by Win Wells, an American playwright, screenwriter, and actor, and it is directed by Chris Weare.

Stein’s activities during World War II have been the subject of analysis and commentary over the years. As a Jew living in Nazi-occupied France, Stein may have been able to sustain her lifestyle as an art collector – and indeed her physical safety – only through the protection of powerful Vichy government official and Nazi collaborator Bernard Faÿ. After the war ended, Stein expressed admiration for another Nazi collaborator, Vichy leader Marshal Pétain.

Her many books include Q.E.D. (1903), about a lesbian romantic affair involving several of Stein’s friends; Fernhurst, a fictional story about a love triangle; and Tender Buttons, published in 1914, in which Stein commented on lesbian sexuality.

In an interview, Johnston explained how she found her way to portraying Stein.

“Lynita secured the rights to the play last year, and invited me to play Gertrude Stein opposite her Alice B. Toklas. Then, award-winning director Chris Weare agreed to direct.”

Weare’s production was staged in Cape Town last year, and was nominated for a Fleur du Cap Theatre Award in the best ensemble category. A further boost was the staging of the play at the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival in May this year, where both Johnston and Crofford were nominated for best actress. Crofford scooped the award as Toklas.

Johnston said she first saw the play in Cape Town in 1996, and was mesmerised. “This is a fascinating story of two remarkable women who abandoned their middle-class American lives and found refuge in the Bohemian decadence of Paris in the early 1900s and in each other,” Johnson recounts.

“Stein drew artistic genius to her salon like a magnet, and they inspired each other to create art. The play captures all of this beautifully.”

Preparing for the role, Johnston read everything she could lay her hands on. “I fell in love with both of them. I had coincidentally been to an exhibition at the Met [The Metropolitan Museum of Art] in New York in 2012 called the ‘Stein Collection’ where much of the art Gertrude and her brother Leo had owned was exhibited. There were also numerous black and white photographs of the Stein siblings which told the story of their sibling rivalry and privilege. I was captivated by the romance and gossip of their interesting lives, never dreaming at that time that I would later play Gertrude.”

Asked whether she considers the role challenging, she reflected, “I have been in about 50 odd plays ranging from Shakespeare to Stoppard to Chekhov to obscure experimental and protest theatre. Gertrude is challenging, but an exciting and delicious character. I never tire of the role. I think perhaps the most challenging thing I’ve done is a children’s play at the Johannesburg Zoo in the 80s.”

What inspired her about the play was the well-written script. She hopes her portrayal captures some of Gertrude’s eccentricity, her keen intelligence, her egotism, artistic genius, and her very human flaws.

Crofford is one of Johnston’s closest friends, and they have worked together on several occasions. “It’s wonderful to play opposite someone you feel completely safe with,” she said.

• Gertrude Stein and a Companion runs until 16 November.