By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Strange things happen on the moors.
“The moors are a savage place,” one character tells a new arrival.
The mood is oppressive. The beauty and dangers warp reality like funhouse mirror. Even the dog is depressed.
The Black Swamp Players explore “The Moors” by Jen Silverman at their home theater at 115 E. Oak St. in downtown Bowling Green. Showtimes are Friday, Jan. 12, and Saturday Jan. 13 at 8 p.m. and Sunday Jan. 14 at 2 p.m. continuing next weekend with 8 p.m. shows on Jan. 19 and 20 and a 2 p.m. Sunday matinee Jan. 21. Click for tickets.
In this twisted, darkly humorous tribute to the gothic fiction of the Brontë sisters, director Fran Martone strikes the right balance between lurking horror and laugh-out-loud comedy.
Emilie (Laura Crawford) is the stranger greeted with that daunting assessment of the moors. She has come to an old mansion seeking romance only to be caught up in a vortex of warped passions. She has been brought here to be a governess. But there’s no child to greet her and listen to her lullabies.
And Mr. Branwell, whose strangely intimate letters coaxed her here, is nowhere to be found. She comes hoping to find a home after a life of moving from household to household. Each has been the same. The mother loathes her, the father demands sexual favors, and then the child dies of some cruel illness. Emilie moves on. Mr. Branwell’s letters promise to end that cycle.
What Emilie steps into is a household ruled by the dictums of the bitter Agatha (Brandie Culbreath). When she orders the dog to sit, everyone else does as well. We first meet her as she is helping her sister younger Huldey (Samantha Heater) fix her hair, which Agatha compares to an unkempt bird’s nest.
Huldey is a dithering, sentimental sort preoccupied with keeping her diary. This, she believes, makes her a famous author. It is full of her most secret and intimate thoughts, that she’s all too willing to share, thrust upon actually, with anyone. She deems Emilie a prospect for sharing intimate thoughts and is oblivious to the governess rebuffing her.
The household also has a parlor maid and a scullery maid, who are actually one woman, Marjory, though she goes by different names depending on her job. Savannah Nine plays the role of the long-suffering Marjory who is either pregnant or has typhus depending again on what her job title happens to be at that moment.
In one piece of cringing comedy, Huldey forces Marjory to dramatize with her an imaginary scene of seduction from her diary. One of the few qualities we know about the mysterious Mr. Branwell is that he had sex with the maids.
The discontents of the household play out as Emilie tries to adjust. She uncovers the passions hidden within Agatha’s bosom and finds she’s been brought to the moors to play a central role in a plot to propagate the family line.
Meanwhile, the family’s mastiff (Dillon Sickels) has urges of his own. Emilie is warned that he is dangerous. He will rip her face off, Agatha tells Emilie. But in the house, he lounges about, until the others leave, and then he step forth to utter poetic, philosophical monologues. Donning a fur robe, Sickels looms at the front of the stage. There’s a heft to him, as if he’d wandered off from some Shakespearean tragedy.
He is lonely until he encounters a moor-hen (Monica Hiris). We have heard of these creatures before – they are the main course for dinner.
The moor-hen has misgivings about flying. Midair she does experience joy, but the take offs and landings are difficult, and indeed, she injures her leg landing.
The Mastiff promises to tend to her. She’s wary. He is big. He eats creatures like her. But he insists his intentions are good. “This is love. This isn’t gravity,” he says.
This unlikely pair’s story plays out in parallel to the unraveling of life in the mansion.
As the passions spin out of control, they resolve in a confirmation of that early assessment. The moors are indeed a savage place.
