Theater
And a Nightingale Sang
Boiler Room Theatre Through July 21 at The Factory at FranklinThe setting is Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a city in England’s provincial northeast whose citizens are known as Geordies—a local phenomenon characterized by distinctive sociopolitical and linguistic roots. Historically, being counted a Geordie may go back to the early 18th century and the debate over such kingly allegiances as Jacobite vs. Hanoverian. Then there is the distinctive Geordie dialect, which might be categorized as the Cockney of the city of Newcastle, specifically as it pertains to residents of the Tyne River’s south bank, which came to include Scottish and Irish migrants who worked in the regional shipyards and coal mines.
C.P. Taylor was Scottish-born but spent most of his career in Newcastle, and he taps into the mindset of his adopted Geordie kinsmen with his portrait of the Stotts. They’re a God-fearing family of five portrayed in both slice-of-life and survival modes, going about their daily business as air-raid sirens wail and Hitler’s planes roar overhead. Mother runs the household with unchallenged firmness. Father serves as air-raid warden (though what he does for a living is never really apparent). Grandfather comes and goes, preoccupied with his dogs and cats. Meanwhile, the two daughters find romance with soldiers, with decidedly mixed results.
Life During Wartime Jack E. Chambers and Elizabeth Eakin
The beauty of Taylor’s craftsmanship is the way he gives deep meaning to the Stotts’ seemingly ordinary lives. He has created a lengthy but not long-winded script, filled with honest and warmly human character studies that take on added significance due to the hardships of war.
Laura Skaug’s realistic direction never fails to engage the audience. Moreover, Skaug and Corbin Green’s imaginative set makes full use of BRT’s limited stage, which readily suggests the family’s cramped living quarters. Set decorations also neatly remind us of the Stotts’ chief concerns: family and the Catholic Church.
The performances are uniformly good. The key player is Elizabeth Eakin as the elder daughter Helen, an ordinary-looking girl afflicted with a slight limp. (She dubs herself “The Cripple.”) Eakin does a marvelous job weaving the play’s narration into her dialogue, and her portrayal gives us a fine sense of integrity.
Lisa Gillespie is your classic British mum, prattling on charmingly, asserting herself when necessary, and evoking smiles with her Catholic devotions and her penchant for tea. Garnering laughs throughout is Douglas Davis as the grandfather, Andie, a peripatetic and addled soul who is loved by all. Megan Murphy is thoroughly effective as younger daughter Joyce—pretty, a tad flighty and very unsure about her marriage to a young soldier. Alan Lee is the father, George, who is mostly satisfied to play second fiddle to his demonstrative wife while he pounds away on the old upright piano. Mike Baum and Jack E. Chambers complete the cast with solid turns as the soldier-suitors.The ensemble’s handling of the Geordie dialect is somewhat of a hit-and-miss affair. Everyone’s doing generally acceptable Brit accents at one level or another, but the thicker Geordie sound seems most palpable with Eakin and Gillespie. Yet, as with everything else in this production, the players endure and, like the Stott family, eventually triumph.