Member of the Wedding, The

Member of the Wedding, The (1950), a play by Carson McCullers. [Empire Theatre, 501 perf.; NYDCC Award.] Frankie Addams ( Julie Harris), a lonely, sensitive twelve‐year‐old girl, lives in a small southern town with a widowed father, who ignores her, and Berenice Sadie Brown ( Ethel Waters), the warm, understanding, thrice‐married “Negro” cook. Only Berenice and Frankie's bespectacled six‐year‐old cousin John Henry West ( Brandon de Wilde) make life bearable for Frankie until her brother Jarvis ( James Holden) returns from the army and asks her to be a member of his wedding party. Frankie is thrilled, then shattered when she realizes that she cannot accompany them on their honeymoon, as she had expected to do. Although John Henry dies of meningitis and Berenice leaves to get married again, the first stirrings of adolescent romance promise better days for Frankie. The play was adapted by the playwright from her novel of the same name. Although most critics had initially held serious reservations about the work, questioning the play's construction, the luminous performances made the Robert Whitehead offering a surprise hit, capping Waters's career and launching Harris into stardom. Revivals by the Phoenix Theatre in 1975, with Mary Beth Hurt and Marge Elliott, and by the Roundabout Theatre in 1989, with Amelia Campbell and Esther Rolle, confirmed the play's stage worthiness.