Theater Review: ‘Dreamsville’ A Mesmerizing One-Person Show At The Academy

There’s silence set against darkness until a slightly warm amber light lifts and a woman walks out. Her black dress becomes her, while her necklace and heels sparkle with every shift of her body. All of these small details say everything before a sound is ever spoken. And when she says a word, at that point, you’re hooked.

On March 19, the Academy of Performing Arts opened its latest show, “Dreamsville,” a story about the unlikely woman, Gloria Stavers, who would become the editor-in-chief of 16 Magazine, shaping much of rock and pop-culture journalism in the process and ultimately ushering rock and roll from fad to fixture throughout the sixties. 

The piece is a one-woman play by Cape Cod playwright Susan Lumenello, directed by Academy of Performing Arts Artistic Director Judy Hamer, starring Missy Potash as Stavers. The play is very much a character piece, as the narrative follows Stavers through her life as a runway model to her early days working the subscription desk at 16 Magazine until she ultimately becomes a tastemaker of the ‘60s.

“Dreamsville,” quite simply, is mesmerizing. Potash embodies Stavers as Lumenello’s story guides the audience both through the creation and fortification of rock as a cultural mainstay to how a person can give their life to an idea and how that can impact other areas of their life. The efforts of both writer and actor are only buoyed by the direction of Hamer.

I knew little of Stavers prior to the show. Being a fan of Rolling Stone and having a childhood rich in the sounds of the era, I had a feel for a lot of the accoutrements of the ‘60s and ‘70s. What I didn’t know, or what I failed to really consider before walking once more into the round at the Academy, was how a person’s desire can become transformative for the people around them, even if they don’t reach that perceived level themselves. This might be one of the main points of Lumenello’s piece. 

Stavers begins the story alone on stage, surrounded by darkness, with a slight amber light accenting her. She tells us of the men she’s been with, of the parties and the places, and how they led her to the position she’s currently in. She’s tired. Her back hurts. The jobs she once put stock in are not as satisfying. So, when the voice of Jacques, performed by Randy Doyle, offers her the opportunity to work the subscription desk at his 16 Magazine, she accepts.

It’s at the subscription desk where the character unfolds before the audience. Stavers gives us her reason for staying at the job that doesn’t value her in a meaningful way. It’s about the girls. The girls who write in with their dollar subscription fee and ask all of the questions that are not being answered. She tells the audience, “I like hearing from the girls” and “I have to take care of them.” It’s at that point she marches up to Jacques and demands the chance to write a feature that would satisfy all of the voices from the letters she understood at such a core level. Once she gets her shot, she builds on it over and over.

Lumenello’s story is sharp, comedically balanced, and tightly written, peeling back layers of a guarded character until she reaches a point in which the audience can see someone at their core self. While much of the journey throughout Stavers’ career is filled with the artists she brought to fame through the pages of 16 Magazine, some of the most touching, raw and true moments of the play are when Stavers is alone in her apartment, looking out into the audience, reflecting on how far she’s come and how still she feels.

Potash is incomparable as Stavers. The role required her to be a woman searching. Stavers is someone who is sure of herself and not aware of the talent and power she has, and Potash plays her with a level of restraint and optimism and certainty that is nothing short of transformative. From the slight North Carolina drawl to the deliberate meandering throughout a story simply to leave you more interested, Potash fully embodies a person’s evolution throughout a life and breaks your heart every time hers does. 

Judging by the staging of “Dreamsville,” Hamer put both actor and playwright in a position they could be highlighted. Making Stavers’ home warm and detailed atop the stairs stage right was the perfect juxtaposition in tone to Stavers at her desk or in her office at 16 Magazine down in the round. Simply having these settings on different levels allowed for a tonal contrast, one more reflective, intimate, confessional, the other, deliberate, empowering, enacting. The staging, along with the music between scene changes and the evolution in Stavers’ wardrobe as time progressed, are just some of the facets that make the play worthy of an audience’s time.