Nightingale

When Lynn Redgrave visited the grave of Beatrice Kempson, her maternal grandmother, she was horrified to find that acid rain had washed away Beatrice's name from her headstone. Redgrave hardly knew Beatrice and can only remember her as the cold and distant woman who refused to give her a cookie on Christmas Eve. In a sense, she is now "a nightingale, singing unheard in the tree at night.”

In Redgrave's imaginative one-woman show "Nightingale," she tries to fill in the blanks by reinventing the story of her grandmother's life. This follows in the tradition Redgrave's previous autobiographical shows about her famous stage family including "Shakespeare for My Father" and "The Mandrake Root."

Beatrice is portrayed as a lonely English girl who is obsessed with strict social mores and unprepared for her marriage to a rather bland husband. (Her mother's only advice about sex was to "just close your eyes and think of England.") Throughout her passionless 32-year marriage, Beatrice's innocent character falls to sadness, distance, disillusionment, and even jealousy of her children's happiness. Redgrave alternates between performing monologues as Beatrice and then switching back to herself to in order compare herself with her grandmother.

Due to a medical condition that reportedly arose during rehearsals, Redgrave is currently performing the show with a script in hand while seated upstage at a hardwood desk and chair in front of a folding screen covered with pictures. This brings along positive and negative consequences.

The show still succeeds as simple, poignant storytelling. The lack of movement actually helps focus one's attention on Redgrave's detailed facial expressions and slight shifts in her distinctive voice as Beatrice continues to age. However, it makes the production feel physically underwhelming. It's also occasionally difficult to determine whether Redgrave is portraying herself or Beatrice.

But on the whole, "Nightingale" is a fascinating and touching project that is driven by a sincere love for forgotten family.

City Center, 131 W. 55th St., 212-581-1212, mtc-nyc.org. Through Dec. 13.