Marvelous Pilgrims (Play)

     Stewart Lemoine, Marvelous Pilgrims. At the Walterdale Playhouse. Directed by Stewart Lemoine. A low-key fairy tale about magical waters, a witch that tries to undo a curse, a personality swap, and of course a love story. Staged using four areas to represent four locales, supposedly set in 1936, but the costumes were more 1906.
     The play’s a fantasy, and such a play succeeds or fails by moving us along briskly so that we accept its premises. The timing of entries and exits, of the switching between locales, and of course the dialogue, must be sharp and precise, and too often it wasn’t so, especially at the crucial plot points of personality swap (which doesn’t have the desired effect and so must be undone before the play is properly done). The script was good enough to engage my interest, though it could have been stretched to explore questions of personality, and/or of the ethics of interfering in other people’s lives, and such. I think the story would have borne the additional weight. Music propelled the story effectively, unusually so in my experience, for playwrights tend to use it to create a mood when the words fail to do so. Here, it was used operatically, to add depth to character and to point the plot. I wouldn’t have minded more music. The overall tone was light, here and there verging on farce. The love story was what it should be: the right people fell in love.
     But the magic hinted at more serious themes: Swapping personalities has heavy implications, and sticking to the merely humorous ones I think was a mistake. Good theatre (which this was) can take us anywhere. In some ways, the play felt unfinished, as if workshopping had stopped because it was time to produce the play. Nevertheless, overall it was a pleasant way to spend an hour and a half. **½