In our film and television-inundated consciousness, we’re used to flashy stories in which cars, planes – even spacecraft – send characters hurtling from event to event.
Belfast Girls, by Irish playwright Jaki McCarrick (presented by Peninsula Productions at White Rock’s Coast Capital Playhouse until Saturday March 11, before moving to the Vancouver Cultch March 15-18) offers a different kind of journey entirely, but one well deserving of unhurried attention.
McCarrick’s unflinching focus – and director Wendy Bollard’s heartfelt, respectful staging – provides a close-up view of five women sharing a cramped cabin on board the Inchinnan, a sailing ship on an arduous three-month voyage from Ireland to Australia in 1850.
They’re being shipped as part of Earl Grey’s scheme to provide orphan girls ‘of good character’ with a new life in the colony – and like many of the 4,000 women transported, they’ve not been above stretching the truth of their backgrounds to the breaking point for a chance to escape the potato famine and a grim life in workhouses or as ‘public women’ (a typically Victorian euphemism for prostitutes).
What seems, on the face of it, a voyage into the future becomes a shocking, cathartic journey through the lingering truth of the women’s past.
As this worthy White Rock-based production demonstrates, it’s the kind of journey for which live theatre exists – the thoughtful, adult fare we need in a medium too frequently dominated, on a local level at least, by fatuous farces and tired whodunnits.
While McCarrick’s admirably pithy 2011 script has received criticism for being lacking in incident, that’s not evident here. A character-driven first act is essential to this journey of discovery for both characters and audience alike, a necessary progression to a hot-house atmosphere of the second act as the ship reaches southern climes and smouldering resentments flame to the fore.
Shrewd, incisive writing, from a historical-political perspective, ultimately reveals five very real women, stripped of past artifice and expectations, arriving on the shores of a new world with almost literally only the clothes on their backs.
And the characterization is the real strength of this production, thanks to Bollard and her talented, dedicated cast.
There’s a great deal of delight to be had in the rough-edged, frequently funny interplay of Tegan Verheul as Hannah and Paige Gibbs as Ellen.
Verheul mines all the comedic potential of the coarse, foul-mouthed Hannah, but also brings to life a naive, appealing pathos of the character, while Gibbs matches her, laugh for laugh, and blow for blow, as the more pragmatic, yet easily led Ellen. (Sensitive souls should be aware the language of the ‘girls’ is very salty indeed).
White Rock’s Amelia Ross – an equally capable player – is very successful in suggesting the submerged conflicts under the apparently quiet surface of country girl Sarah.
In the inevitable boiling of these emotions to the surface, however, I find the transition a little abrupt and not adequately foreshadowed – although this might have been helped by more directorial edge and stronger suggestion of heat-frayed nerves in the scenes preceding it.
Olivia Sara Grace is pitch-perfect and very touching as the more refined Molly, the servant girl who dreams of being an actress, and whose most prized possessions are books given to her by her mistress.
Sadly, it’s a performance so strong that it tends to overshadow the sincere work of Mariam Barry as Judith, the Jamaican-born, Irish-raised woman who establishes herself as unappointed leader of the girls in the cabin.
While Barry is good in quieter, more contemplative moments – and in scenes where Judith and Molly discover another aspect to their developing closeness – her performance doesn’t quite take Judith to the level of dynamism required at the play’s core.
The cast have worked hard to master Irish accents that, for the most part, convince, although they sometimes run the risk of mashing syllables into incomprehensibility. It’s a difficult tightrope to walk, admittedly.
The biggest issues I have with this production, however, are more environmental. As always, with community and regional theatre, “the devil is in the details.”
While Corinna Akeson’s sound design – gulls, creaking timbers, ship’s bells, raucous laughter and all – travels a long way toward the sense of an enveloping, visceral reality I look for in theatre, this could be pushed even further.
Nicole Weismiller’s lighting of Andy Sorensen’s brilliantly evocative set is at its best at its lower levels – a general wash, too frequently used, does nothing to reinforce the impression of low ceilings and cramped spaces ‘tween decks,’ while unwavering lamplight during a storm sequence undermines credibility.
And while Chantal Short’s costumes and Shannon Regan’s hairdressing make a stab at suggesting some other time and place, they lack a convincing stamp of authenticity to the specific period of the play that could have strengthened this production.
In the playing, too, the suggestion of place could be stronger – I miss the sense of characters walking on a deck on rolling seas, while the players’ grip on bunks at the peak of the storm seems more a function of blocking than hanging on for dear life.
For tickets and information, visit www.peninsulaproductions.org
