The Geller Girls brings history through Southern fairy tale

Local Atlanta playwright, Janece Shaffer, brings her first historical piece, The Geller Girls, to Alliance Theatre. Filled with the promise of change and a new era for the South, yet still including the white knuckled age old cliches, The Geller Girls is a 1895 Southern fairy tale.

Following the family’s life during the Cotton States and International Exposition held in what we now call Piedmont Park, we see a daughter patiently waiting for her school career to end so she can marry her longtime beau, a very southern and pushy stepmother, a business and bourbon minded father, and the black sheep of the family, a daughter who wants success instead of love. Oh, but then along comes a yankee man who changes everything for this seemingly happy family.

Alliance Theatre, under the direction of Susan V. Booth, and the design of Collette Pollard, Linda Roethke, and Clay Benning, did an amazing job at bringing Atlanta to the stage. It was beautiful, interesting, and yet still simplistic enough to let the acting shine through. Which with locals like Courtney Patterson (Rosalee Geller), Ann Marie Gideon (Louisa Geller), Courtenay Collins (Sarahann Geller), Mark Cabus (Albert Geller), and Joe Sykes (Charles Heyman) it’s an easy task.

The writing was filled with humor and still layered in the complexity of emotion needed to keep things interesting. We watch as this stranger influences choices and how this fuels and complicates the feminist tendencies throughout the play. Women are finally breaking through their household boundaries and the women in this play want to play along, somewhat. But for some reason it still takes a man to make all their dreams come true. And in the end they still don’t rely on themselves, or even each other, they rely on a man.

Is it feminist? No. Is it Southern? Yes. It is a cute story about a family going through a change. Something, no matter how small, needs to happen. It depicts an era in Atlanta that is long gone and, though romanticized, thankfully so.

The Geller Girls is running until Feb. 9 at Alliance Theatre. If you have a Southern granny take her. It will be worth the laughs, the incredible set, and local talent.