A play about death, disease and exile? Count me in.
The year is 1847, the place is Middle Island, Chatham N.B. A ship must anchor on the island as its passengers are being devastated by typhus and scarlet fever. The passengers’ original hope was to find a new home in Quebec, but now all they hope for is to leave this island with their lives.
These are the characters the Next Folding Theatre Co.’s cast of “Quarantine Island 1847” portrayed on the Charlotte Street Arts Centre stage last week. The six cast members (Matthew Chiasson, James Corbett, Elizabeth Goodyear, Tricia Harrity, and STU’s own Sam Crowell and Michael Holmes-Lauder) acted, directed and wrote the play themselves.
The actors had their work cut out for them as they each depicted different characters in several loosely-connected stories. Each new scene showed a unique perspective from a doctor to a soldier to the healthy survivors living in the woods; the drama is more psychological and emotional than plot driven.
The actors pulled the performance off handsomely, though special praise should be given to Elizabeth Goodyear, whose role as a mother frightened of bringing sickness to her child struck me as realistic and provocative; she made the audience question the ethics of abandoning one’s child.
The play looks at the relationships in our lives and where they stand in the face of disaster: What does it mean to be a mother? A wife? A husband? A man?
Many props were mimed, and the set was minimal, with just a white backdrop toward the back of the stage and a few chairs to the sides for the actors to sit on while not in the scene – all of which just redirected attention towards the performances.
All in all, despite being a depressing play, leaving the theatre, I felt I had both stared into the face of tragedy and connected with the history of this province, which I can’t help but smile at.
