By Ernest Kearney — After an hour spent with her music, we still do not know who Elizabeth Eaton Converse, “Connie” to her friends, actually was; nor do we, or anyone else, know what became of the singer/songwriter who, at the age of fifty, wrote a letter to friends and family begging them to “let me go, please,” and, simply, disappeared.
All the audience really knows is that Converse’s music and sentiments were ahead of their time and that Hope Levy is an extraordinary performer whose singing can syncopate the heartbeats of an entire audience to any tempo she chooses.
Levy is not Converse. Levy is a strikingly professional and naturally dazzling entertainer. Converse was the product of a strict religious upbringing. Levy is a kaleidoscope of personality. Converse was inhibited to the point of being shadowless in her own life.
But Levy gives presence to the lost artist and fills her forgotten songs with her own rebounding passion and, in doing so, reclaims the missing Connie Converse from the lost.
***
The Connie Converse Universe Starring Hope Levy
Playing During the Hollywood Fringe Festival 2024
at
ACTORS COMPANY (THE LITTLE THEATER)
916 N. Formosa Ave
Sunday June 23 2024, 11:00 AM | 55 mins
Friday June 28 2024, 5:30 PM | 55 mins
Sunday June 30 2024, 12:30 PM | 55 mins
***