The QUONTA Drama Region's annual festival brings together
community theatre productions from across northeastern Ontario
for a week of staging, discussing, learning about, and living
the art of theatre. This year there are four productions entered.
I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so
I am coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.
I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so
I am coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.
Tempting Providence
by Robert Chafe
Presented by Elliot Lake Amateur Theatre Ensemble (ELATE)
Directed by Murray Finn
Wednesday night's opening production of the Festival brought a uniquely funny and powerful Canadian play based on a real life story.
It's the story of Myra Grimsley Bennett, who came from England in 1921 to the remote outport community of Daniel's Harbour, Newfoundland, on a 2-year contract as district nurse, and remained in that role for 50 more years, most of that time as an unpaid volunteer.
This performance more than met the author's demand for a "theatrical" style of staging. That's one of those Humpty Dumpty words that means whatever one wants it to mean. In this situation, I would take it to mean that the style of staging should not attempt to be realistic, nor to conceal the fact that we are witnessing a performance.
The set, in a plain box of blacks, consisted of a playing area defined by a carpet on the floor. On this stood a large, old-fashioned table with two pairs of matching chairs, one pair facing it from either side of the carpet. A row of plain black chairs stood across the back. The keyboard player was seated in the far upstage-left corner.
Theatricality continued with the plain, neutral costumes, strongly suggestive of hospital pyjamas and gowns.
Lighting was effective for the most part, although one serious dark patch continued to catch the actors unawares. The stage in the Civic Centre of Elliot Lake is notoriously difficult to light well.
The script consists of a whole series of short little scenes and vignettes interspersed with monologues. The four actors took turns moving to the front of the carpet to face the audience, or to the sides of the table. The table itself was frequently moved from position to position, and sometimes turned into different angles, or upside down, to become -- in turn -- a sailboat and a sleigh. All of these complex resettings were accomplished by the actors smoothly and easily, an essential need of this kind of staging.
Two of the performers are simply referred to as "Woman" (Fran Perkins) and "Man" (David Black), since each one has to play many different roles during the play -- eight to ten parts each! Both made very effective use of voice and physicality to delineate the different characters and their lives in just a few lines each time.
Their back-fence gossips were a particular delight, bringing appreciative laughter from the audience at each of their several appearances.
Perkins then made a different, and very moving, impression as a woman who has just lost a family member to tuberculosis but refuses to let herself be examined by the nurse, even though she also has a hollow cough.
In the central role of the Myra, Kim Arnold did fine work in holding herself in stern check from ever showing her emotions, allowing only hints of her own feelings to come to the surface. As the years rolled by she slowly let more and more of her emotions come out as she grew more and more into the life of the community, and into the life of her own family.
Especially powerful was her desperate monologue during the midnight sleigh ride to save the life of her husband's younger brother -- and the reference to the injured man as "my brother" spoke volumes about how much she had changed since the opening of the story.
Jim Graham, as Angus (her husband), did equally fine work in growing from the young man who took one look at the new nurse and said, jokingly, "I'm going to marry her" up to the final scene decades later where they stood together on the front porch and watched as the long-awaited road into Daniel's Harbour was finally being built. In the monologues where the young Angus was telling his side of the story, Graham made effective use of a sly, roguish grin to augment his spoken thoughts.
All four performers had very good control of their respective accents.
According to adjudicator Laurel Smith, there is no mention in the script of music. I had to slip that in, because the live music on stage, written and performed by Ponto Paparo, interacted so closely with the speaking actors that he became, in effect, a fifth character in the story. This integrated live performance is one of the most memorable uses of music I have ever seen on any theatre stage.
With a script and performance of this nature, the pacing is of critical importance to the success of the show. All the scene changes, as mentioned above, flowed smoothly and easily with a minimum of wasted time and excellent coordination of the cast. I did sense one or two moments in a couple of the scenes in which the speed slackened and the emotional temperature sagged for a few moments, such that I momentarily disconnected from the play. One the whole, though, a very well-paced and consistently "up" performance from all concerned.
A few comments on the script to close. The "bitty" nature of the writing made it a little difficult to figure out who was who as the play began. It took me about 10 minutes to fully enter into the world of the play. (I followed my usual habit of not reading the programme notes before the show). The other place where I sensed a lack of direction from the author came at the end. The scene where the Man and Woman announced all the honours received by Myra Grimsley Bennett had a definite air of finality about it -- the sort of thing that usually appears at the end of a film and is immediately followed by the credit roll. Naturally, the audience launched into their end-of-show applause. But there were still two more scenes to come.
ELATE has launched this festival in fine style with a tight, clean, moving, and enjoyable production of a slightly rocky script that yet tells a fascinating story from Canada's past.
It's the story of Myra Grimsley Bennett, who came from England in 1921 to the remote outport community of Daniel's Harbour, Newfoundland, on a 2-year contract as district nurse, and remained in that role for 50 more years, most of that time as an unpaid volunteer.
This performance more than met the author's demand for a "theatrical" style of staging. That's one of those Humpty Dumpty words that means whatever one wants it to mean. In this situation, I would take it to mean that the style of staging should not attempt to be realistic, nor to conceal the fact that we are witnessing a performance.
The set, in a plain box of blacks, consisted of a playing area defined by a carpet on the floor. On this stood a large, old-fashioned table with two pairs of matching chairs, one pair facing it from either side of the carpet. A row of plain black chairs stood across the back. The keyboard player was seated in the far upstage-left corner.
Theatricality continued with the plain, neutral costumes, strongly suggestive of hospital pyjamas and gowns.
Lighting was effective for the most part, although one serious dark patch continued to catch the actors unawares. The stage in the Civic Centre of Elliot Lake is notoriously difficult to light well.
The script consists of a whole series of short little scenes and vignettes interspersed with monologues. The four actors took turns moving to the front of the carpet to face the audience, or to the sides of the table. The table itself was frequently moved from position to position, and sometimes turned into different angles, or upside down, to become -- in turn -- a sailboat and a sleigh. All of these complex resettings were accomplished by the actors smoothly and easily, an essential need of this kind of staging.
Two of the performers are simply referred to as "Woman" (Fran Perkins) and "Man" (David Black), since each one has to play many different roles during the play -- eight to ten parts each! Both made very effective use of voice and physicality to delineate the different characters and their lives in just a few lines each time.
Their back-fence gossips were a particular delight, bringing appreciative laughter from the audience at each of their several appearances.
Perkins then made a different, and very moving, impression as a woman who has just lost a family member to tuberculosis but refuses to let herself be examined by the nurse, even though she also has a hollow cough.
In the central role of the Myra, Kim Arnold did fine work in holding herself in stern check from ever showing her emotions, allowing only hints of her own feelings to come to the surface. As the years rolled by she slowly let more and more of her emotions come out as she grew more and more into the life of the community, and into the life of her own family.
Especially powerful was her desperate monologue during the midnight sleigh ride to save the life of her husband's younger brother -- and the reference to the injured man as "my brother" spoke volumes about how much she had changed since the opening of the story.
Jim Graham, as Angus (her husband), did equally fine work in growing from the young man who took one look at the new nurse and said, jokingly, "I'm going to marry her" up to the final scene decades later where they stood together on the front porch and watched as the long-awaited road into Daniel's Harbour was finally being built. In the monologues where the young Angus was telling his side of the story, Graham made effective use of a sly, roguish grin to augment his spoken thoughts.
All four performers had very good control of their respective accents.
According to adjudicator Laurel Smith, there is no mention in the script of music. I had to slip that in, because the live music on stage, written and performed by Ponto Paparo, interacted so closely with the speaking actors that he became, in effect, a fifth character in the story. This integrated live performance is one of the most memorable uses of music I have ever seen on any theatre stage.
With a script and performance of this nature, the pacing is of critical importance to the success of the show. All the scene changes, as mentioned above, flowed smoothly and easily with a minimum of wasted time and excellent coordination of the cast. I did sense one or two moments in a couple of the scenes in which the speed slackened and the emotional temperature sagged for a few moments, such that I momentarily disconnected from the play. One the whole, though, a very well-paced and consistently "up" performance from all concerned.
A few comments on the script to close. The "bitty" nature of the writing made it a little difficult to figure out who was who as the play began. It took me about 10 minutes to fully enter into the world of the play. (I followed my usual habit of not reading the programme notes before the show). The other place where I sensed a lack of direction from the author came at the end. The scene where the Man and Woman announced all the honours received by Myra Grimsley Bennett had a definite air of finality about it -- the sort of thing that usually appears at the end of a film and is immediately followed by the credit roll. Naturally, the audience launched into their end-of-show applause. But there were still two more scenes to come.
ELATE has launched this festival in fine style with a tight, clean, moving, and enjoyable production of a slightly rocky script that yet tells a fascinating story from Canada's past.
No comments:
Post a Comment