Reviews

“Since there are only a handful of top actors in the Tampa Bay area, it’s a great pleasure to discover an unknown talent. Her name is Linda Slade, she’s a Brit educated at Cambridge, and she’s currently appearing as the Governess in the Stageworks production of The Turn of the Screw. “Appearing,” though, is an understatement. More precisely, she’s currently acting up a storm along with Eric Davis, another fine thespian, and reminding us that it’s possible to love a production as much for its performers as for its script.

Slade’s talents are manifold. When she describes the ghostly apparitions so pivotal to Henry James’ story (adapted for the theater by Jeffrey Hatcher), she does so with such precise, rapt horror, we can almost see them ourselves. In her relations with her two young charges, Flora and Miles, she helps us to understand that this Governess is not only a prim maiden of the 19th century, but also a needy and aggressive woman, possibly unbalanced from too much isolation. And, far from coming across as a mere abstraction in a tale famous for its ambiguities, Slade brings us the Governess as a creature of flesh and blood, to be admired, pitied or despised, but never to be discounted. This is wonderful, multidimensional acting of a kind we’ve been missing too long on area stages.

But the real story here is acting: some of the best that I’ve seen ever on a local stage.”