BY KEN CHISHOLM
The Highland Arts Theatre’s production of The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, adapted for the stage by Wendy Lill from Sheldon Currie’s novel, has a small ensemble cast but epic ambitions of telling the story of industrial Cape Breton.
That it succeeds in a major way is due to that small cast being under the insightful eye of director Ron Jenkins (all of them Cape Bretoners–maybe a first in the production history of this play), but in large measure it is due to the dynamic, engaging, and tragic figure of Margaret MacNeil, played with gusto and a big heart by Jenna Lahey.
The play is set in Reserve Mines just after the Second World War. Margaret, who wears the small-town (and undeserved) reputation of being a “snot-nosed whore” with fierce defiance, meets Neil Currie, a returning war veteran, who is desperate for paying work but not desperate enough to work in the mines. “You must be the biggest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen,” Margaret observes, and Neil drunkenly replies, “You must be the smallest son of a bitch I’ve ever seen”.
Soon, Neil is wooing a semi-reluctant Margaret and ingratiates himself into her family. He plays old Scottish melodies on his bagpipes for her Grandfather; he reconnects her mother to joys of her youth; and he drinks copious rum and furiously argues with her union organizing brother, Ian. And he reconnects all of them to their memories of their lost family members and their Gaelic traditions.
In a way, this connects with the Cape Breton University Boardmore Theatre’s recent production of Machinal; here are people losing their culture, their hopes for any chance to set the course of their own lives, their very sense of who they are, in service of an industry under the protection of a government ready to send in the troops if the gears of the profit machine are anyway threatened.
Tragedy, as anyone familiar with life in a mining town knows, chooses its targets. Margaret’s way of facing the seemingly inevitable is both shockingly ghoulish and defiant as ever.
Lill’s script perfectly captures the earthy tone of Currie’s original writing. It is at its best when it’s a story about storytelling; storytelling as a necessity for, not a culture to remain strong, but to give heart and meaning to individual lives. Lill also wrote another locally produced play, The Fighting Days, staged by TheatreHub last year, about the Canadian suffragette movement so it’s no surprise that she made the miners’ efforts to unionize a major part of the storytelling. But sometimes it felt that this more political and abstract material unbalanced the play and sapped some of the emotional energy and focus away from the characters. When it returned to Margaret and Neil and their family, the heart returned to the play for an emotionally-crushing finale.
Lahey is a ball of fierce energy as Margaret. She stomps a dance in happiness, she whoops with glee in love, she smiles and radiates Margaret’s few moments of joy, she remembers her lost brother with a wistful, heartbreaking expression of happiness and profound sadness, she slashes out in anger at those closest to her, and, ultimately, she rages with grief (with probably the purest expression of this emotion I’ve seen on stage). It’s a raw, almost naked performance of emotion. Lahey’s three dimensional and full-blooded performance as Margaret will be recognizable, and embraced, by everyone who grew up, even after the mines were flooded and the steel plant made scrap, in the industrial lands of Cape Breton.
Mark Delaney, as Neil, is the gentlest of giants. He is believably charming and ingratiating—courting Margaret and her family, but Delany also captures Neil’s obstinacy at trying to preserve a culture that is slipping away. He gives the subtlest performance of drunkenness and he is the most convincing bagpiper I’ve ever seen. He makes a human being out of what might become a fantasy figure of everything laudable about Gaelic culture. His chemistry with Lahey is electric and the audience, by their reaction at Wednesday evening’s performance, completely invested in the truth of Margaret and Neil’s relationship.
Kerrianne MacKenzie, as Margaret’s mom Catherine, served as a warning post for the kind of life her daughter might expect. MacKenzie perfectly caught the anger and pessimism, stripped of hope or expectation of joy, of her character. She also caught the black caustic humour of Catherine (who, after all, was a Chisholm before she married). And she brought a girlish glee to a rousing game of “peggy”.
Brandon Carabin, as brother Ian, expertly captured the dilemma of a young man caught between the exuberant idealism of youth and the weighty practical responsibilities of adulthood in subtle physical ways. His entrances and exits onstage captured the dead tired movement of someone inured to the physical drudgery of long shifts in the pit. And Carabin made his character’s passion for unionism almost a physical relationship. Like Delaney, he makes a very convincing onstage drunk.
Dave Petrie, as Grandpa, in some ways had the most challenging role of the play. His character, robbed of his voice by lungs black with coal dust and unable to move from his stage left rocker, managed to be fully in every scene through Petrie’s ability to make listening visually compelling. Every time he shook with agony coughing out the devil in his chest, the audience held its breath afraid he might be breathing his last. Petrie’s performance was full of humour, sensitivity, and heart.
And they were all directed to these well-defined performances by Ron Jenkins. Jenkins is not only consummate at leading any cast of actors to their best performances; he is also a master of using all of the tools of stagecraft to raise these performances to an even higher level. Working with lighting designer Ken Heaton, sound designer Ciaran MacGillivray, and set and costume designer Kayla Cormier, Jenkins made the small world of the play expand with expressionistic effects that often had the audience gasping in shock. Special mention must go to MacGillivray who created the convincing bagpipe effects (no bagpipes were harmed in the production of this play—unfortunately) as well as contributing a number of original compositions.
And what can we say about a local theatre community where two professional level productions featuring two electrifying performances from two immensely talented female performers playing two complicated and compelling female lead characters are thrilling big audiences at two different venues in the short space of two weeks?
More, please.
The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum continues nightly at 8 pm until Sunday, February 24, at the Highland Arts Theatre.
