Those fortunate enough to catch Daniel MacIvor’s Marion Bridge at Peninsula Productions’ studio theatre in White Rock last week knew they were in the presence of some pure theatrical magic.
Director Kathleen Duborg and her cast (Julie Lynn Mortensen, Alison Wanduzra and Grace Evenson) took a beautifully written script – about three adult sisters coming home to Nova Scotia to be with their dying mother – and spun a little gold with it.
The only real downside to this Marion Bridge for me was that it was a staged reading, not a fully staged production.
While an admirable demonstration of bare-bones theatre and the power of excellent acting to conjure compelling images out of thin air, it’s a play that really deserves a full staging, should Peninsula ever care to revisit it.
And, dare I suggest – since most of the action seems to take place around the kitchen table of a family home in the present day – not one that would require a massive investment.
My only other regret is that the typical four-performance run for such readings afforded scant opportunity for those who enjoyed it to warmly recommend it to others.
The premise of Marion Bridge, admittedly, sounds like an opportunity for doom, gloom and overwrought histrionics.
The ‘homecoming’ is one of the hoariest of dramatic tropes, after all, and in the hands of many a playwright, it’s a take-no-prisoners exercise in mutual destruction, as skeletons are systematically dragged from closets, illusions shattered and protective devices demolished.
It’s to MacIvor’s credit that, while he inevitably visits all of this terrain in Marion Bridge, he and his characters don’t become mired in it. He has left ample room for humour and poetic moments and even joy among the sisterly sniping, and when the play reaches its logical conclusion, it feels more like a hopeful beginning than a bitter ending.
Duborg’s sure and sensitive direction drew performances from her three actors that were immensely appealing – particularly in quiet, yet moving, soliloquies – primarily because they chose honesty over showy artifice.
By play’s end audience members realized that, more than simply understanding these women – flaws and all – we actually liked them.
As Agnes, escaping a shaky Toronto-based acting career, and leaning heavily on alcohol as her way of coping, Wanduzra commendably shied away from stereotypes of intoxication.
But while in initial scenes she might have provided more of a suggestion of the disjointed, wandering focus of the alcoholic – even a high-functioning one like Agnes – Wanduzra nonetheless succeeded in creating a fascinatingly complex, fully shaded portrait. She ably portrayed a woman whose presence as a catalyst masks strong opposing forces under the surface: a fearful sense of powerlessness in the process of being overrun by long-dormant maternal instinct.
As Theresa, a nun undergoing a crisis of faith, Mortensen created a masterful characterization of a woman in conflict.
She offered the audience a Theresa deeply aware of her role as the responsible one of the three – while registering her understandable resentment of Agnes’ constant barbs against her religious sensibilities.
But, as the play progressed, Mortensen's skilful playing parted the character’s defensive curtains to reveal a beautiful inner glow – Theresa’s joy in simple things like tilling the earth on the farm where she works, for example, or in deciphering the love behind their mother’s cryptic post-it-note messages.
As Louise, the youngest of the three, Evenson fully embodied the ambiguity and awkwardness of a sensitive individual clinging to her television shows as an avoidance mechanism in the midst of grief.
But she also succeeded in imbuing the character with a delightful sense of childish innocence, particularly effective as her two complicated sisters ultimately learn Louise’s needs and wants are, perhaps, far less complex than they might have imagined.
