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Three black-clothed women in white shawls, in a stately processional, carry a large ship's model across the stage to the eerily beautiful sounds of whale song. A doll-sized woman, demure in hoopskirts and bonnet, plays hymms on her organ in the ship's hold, then heaves into a wooden bucket. With those startling images, director Lenny Pinna begins Bonnie Kohn Remsberg's unique presentation "The Whaling Wife" to the new Ecclesia Theatre at Lake Erie College.
Recently developed at the National Puppetry Conference, Remsberg's play is based on the 19th century diaries of Sarah, the wife of a whaling ship captain. The occasionally slow-moving narrative is gorgeously brought to life by Pinna and designer Deborah Glassberg, who fill it with memorable images that conjure a strange, arduous life at sea.
It takes a while to get used to the conventions of puppetry used, but it's fascinating to watch. Remsberg, in black dress, provides Sarah's voice as she tenderly manipulates the 30-inch faceless doll-puppet to write in her journal with quill pen, or dab at her eyes with a handkerchief when she weeps. The little puppet's odd blank features become emblematic of the character Remsberg writes: for Sarah's narrative voice is formal, archaic, full of pieties and her continuing struggle to be the model Christian wife the Bible and society tells her to be.
And under what circumstances! Surrounded by superstitious, sex-starved sailors, who view her as bad luck -- braving pregnancies and childbirth on board -- slipping on decks flowing with whale oil and blood, shipwrecked in Arctic waters, Sarah remains corsetted by her role until the play's end.
The second act is livelier than the first, partly because the play shifts beyond from the claustrophobic loneliness of a single whaling voyage to more social circumstances and exotic climes. Sunni Gothard and Felicita Sanchez are delightful as fellow wives in Rarotonga, where even Bible study brings gossip and understanding ears.
Michelle Tomko crackles in all her roles, especially the male ones, which bring blessed relief from the relentless feminine pieties. She steals the show as a sailor who sings a rambunctious alphabet song as he roughhouses with Sarah's children, and a hilariously eloquent Honolulu chaplain.
Throughout, the piece is awash with music and moody spectacle, mostly provided by the 3-woman ensemble playing against the simple but effective set. Gothard, in a glittering black shawl, croons an elegy as Sanchez & Tomko slowly crank a tiny white bundle over the side of the small ship in a burial at sea. Sometimes the aural scores overlap, as sailor's chanties collide with hymn-singing women. A large white sheet hung by ropes is continually transformed by light, and pulled into different shapes -- becoming riggging, sails under a harsh wind, waves, icebergs. Rear projections bring visions of oncoming vessels and a gaping carcass of whale bone.
There are still rough spots. Sometimes the characters conjured from items in Sarah's trunk aren't clear. Remsberg isn't always at home with her text, and her quavering voice carries an immense amount of narrative. It was also hard to separate her occasional awkwardness as puppeteer-actor from Sarah's rigidly conventional persona.
In places I longed for Remsberg to take more risks and liberties with the material, to use the extraordinary potential of this surreal medium to delve under the surface to Sarah's buried dreams, doubts, pain. There is the barest hint of it at the end, when Sarah invokes the spirit of a whale as she contemplates her killing corset made of its bones. More poetic exploration of darker revelations, off the pages of her source journals, could make this piece could soar. It's already a fascinating journey, and Ecclesia is to be commended for bringing it to life.
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