Stretch (A Fantasia)

Through April 25, $29-$48, People's Light & Theatre Co., 39 Conestoga Road, Malvern, 610-644-3500, peopleslight.org.

by Mark Cofta

Mark Garvin

theater

Susan Bernfield's Stretch (A Fantasia) is less about history than about coping with history happening around us. People's Light & Theatre Co.'s Alda Cortese plays Rose Mary Woods in her 2004 nursing home decline, when she ruefully calls herself little more than a Jeopardy question for her Watergate role as Richard Nixon's tape-recording secretary. Through her curmudgeonly conversations with a retired history teacher (Tom Teti) and a stoner orderly (Jefferson Haynes), Woods' status as living history shapes their, and our, views of past, present and future politics. Those of a certain age will appreciate Woods' acerbic Nixon recollections, but all can connect with her spunky defiance in director Daniella Topol's witty production, with music employing typewriters and tape recorders by Broken Chord Collective.