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written and directed by Daniel MacIvor

The Company Theatre, Young Centre, Toronto

May 4-26, 2007

To anyone who has seen only Daniel MacIvor’s solo works, Marion Bridge will come as a surprise.  There is no horrific murder at the centre of the story nor is the play an extended paradox about the nature of illusion and reality.  Instead, Marion Bridge (1998), only now receiving its Toronto professional premiere, is a warm lyrical comedy without the plunges into the depths of horror or absurdity one has come to expect from MacIvor. 

The initial set-up seems unpromising because it has become so overused.  Three sisters reunite after many years apart because their mother is dying.  An ordinary playwright would use this scenario to force the estranged family to dredge up and finally confront secrets from the past.  MacIvor, however, is not an ordinary playwright.  Since his sisters already know the secrets from the past, he subverts the whole scenario.  Instead, the reunited MacKeigan sisters, though they may initially present a pose of self-assuredness, realize that they are each somehow dissatisfied with the lives they are leading.  The eldest sister Agnes (Caroline Gillis) is an actress in Toronto with a tendency to drown her sorrows in drink.  The middle sister Theresa (Sarah Dodd), a nun in a New Brunswick farming order, seeks comfort in faith.  The youngest Louise (Emmy Alcorn) is “different”--whether because of her sexuality or mentality is never clear.  Her life is organized by the TV schedule and centres particularly on her favourite soap.  As their mother departs from life, all three feel the impulse to renew the lives they have. 

All three actors give superlative performances.  Their relations with each other are so clearly and naturally detailed, you feel you know them and come to anticipate how they will react.  MacIvor seems to want to show that lives can change completely without the shocks and chills of his other plays.  The pace is calm and the tone gentle.  The set is minimal--only a floor, a table and three chairs.  Yet, just like MacIvor’s best works, the larger meaning of the play emerges only gradually and echoes long in the mind afterwards.  The nearby town of Marion Bridge may have been a kind of paradise for the MacKeigans’ mother, but the sisters come to find that paradise may not be another place but a world they can create themselves.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-05-08.

Photo: Sarah Dodd and Emmy Alcorn.