A gravestone washed bare by acid rain, a failed marriage and a flight home to be with family were triggers that led actress Lynn Redgrave to write "Nightingale," the third play about members of her family, which just opened at Hartford Stage. The gravestone was that of her maternal grandmother, Beatrice "Beanie" Kempson, which Redgrave discovered when she returned to her family in England after the end of her 32-year marriage.

The bare stone and her emotional reconnection with her family caused her to wonder: "When we die, what mark do we leave? What is left of us to tell the world that once we lived and breathed and laughed and wept""No one dies who is remembered," she thought, and set about filling the blank slate that the life of "Beanie" had become. "Nightingale," which is having its East Coast premiere at Hartford Stage, is a one-woman show in which the talented Redgrave assumes the roles of many characters, mostly female, in her fictionalized recreation of "Beanie's" life.

The actress won the L.A. Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Solo Performance last year for this play.

The necessity for fiction was due to the fact that her grandmother had been a very distant woman -- not easy to love -- and not very open about her feelings. Many of the incidents in the 11-scene play, which covers the years 1904 to 1973, are based on what Redgrave calls "Chinese whispers" including things recalled by her mother, Rachel Kempson.