Who is this Anita Gates you speak of?

A.G.’s journalistic triumphs over 25 years at The New York Times include drinking with Bea Arthur (at a Trump hotel), Wendy Wasserstein (at an Italian restaurant) and Peter O’Toole (in his trailer on a mini-series set near Dublin). It is sheer coincidence that these people are now dead.

At The New York Times, she has been Arts & Leisure television editor and co-film editor, a theater reviewer on WQXR Radio, a film columnist for the Times TV Book and an editor in the Culture, Book Review, Travel, National, Foreign and Metro sections. Her first theater review for The Times appeared in 1997, assessing “Mrs. Cage,” a one-act about a housewife suspected of shooting her favorite supermarket box boy. The review was mixed.

Outside The Times, A.G. has been the author of four nonfiction books; a longtime writer for travel magazines, women's magazines and travel guidebooks; a lecturer at universities and for women’s groups; and a moderator for theater, book, film and television panels at the 92nd Street Y and the Paley Center for Media.

If she were a character on “Mad Men,” she’d be Peggy.

'The Secret Life of Bees' at the Atlantic: Lynn Nottage Who?

Anita Gates
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AVE MARIA A scene from “The Secret Life of Bees,” set in South Carolina in 1964. The statue of a black Virgin Mary is the focus of one family’s religion.

OPINION HAS BEEN DIVIDED on “The Secret Life of Bees,” the Atlantic Theater Company’s latest production. Some theatergoers rushed to see it because they’d loved the novel of the same name, published in 2002 by Sue Monk Kidd. (Granted, The New Yorker referred to the book as “amiable and ludicrous.”) Or the 2008 movie version, with Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson and Dakota Fanning. Fans of “Spring Awakening” couldn’t wait to hear the newest music by Duncan Sheik. I was excited about seeing a new play by Lynn Nottage.

The plot of “Bees” is straightforward enough, considering its fantasy tone. In 1964, the year LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, two young women run away from home, a peach farm in South Carolina. The white girl, 14-year-old Lily (Elizabeth Teeter), is getting away from her cruel widowed father. The young black woman, Rosaleen (Saycon Sengbloh), who has taken care of Lily for years, is escaping the horrific racial violence she encountered when she set off to register to vote.

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TRAVELING COMPANIONS Saycon Sengbloh, left, and Elizabeth Teeter as two South Carolinians who run away from home and find a new home with some particularly enlightened beekeepers.

With a photographic clue from Lily’s dead mother, they set out for a town called Tiburon and soon find themselves at a prosperous, strangely New Age bee farm run by three black sisters (siblings, that is, not nuns). The three have developed their own religion, worshiping a black madonna, and everyone who comes in contact with them learns valuable lessons about life and selfhood.

Variety’s critic found it all enchanting. The New York Times’s — Jesse Green — didn’t. Although Green loved the score (“quite beautiful”), he was annoyed that the story was more about the white character than the black character. He also offered the theory that Nottage’s script worked better for people who had already read the novel and knew the richness of the story well.

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SISTERS OF MERCY Rosaleen, second from right, has some healing to do at the bee farm. Making her first attempt to vote, she was beaten by white men and thrown in jail.

Green may be right on that front, but that’s impossible for those unfamiliar with the book (including me) to know for sure. The bottom line is that the show’s dialogue and plot take a back seat to the music, which is lovely. How many musicals have you ever seen that had a stirring song about signing your name on a ballot? And how can you claim not to get a song called “Frogs and Fireflies”? It’s all about the senses. The lyrics are by Susan Birkenhead, whose past credits include “Jelly’s Last Jam.”

“The Secret Life of Bees,” Linda Gross Theater, Atlantic Theater Company, 336 West 20th Street, atlantictheater.org, 866-811-4111. 2 hours 15 minutes. Limited run. Opened on June 13, 2019. Closes on July 21., 2019.

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