BWW Reviews: Novelist Debuts as Playwright

Portland Stage closes its season with the world premiere of award-winning Maine novelist, Monica Wood's touching first play, Papermaker. Set during the papermill strike of 1989 in the fictional town of Abbott Falls, Maine, the work probes the perceptions, conflicts, and interactions of individuals on both sides of the painful controversy. Handling material already familiar to her readers from her memoir, When We Were the Kennedys, Wood brings to the stage a compassionate grasp of character, a poetic sense of metaphor, and just enough sharp wit and turn of phrase to add spice to this all-too-human drama about ordinary folks whose lives and identities are turned upside down by the bitter labor dispute.

Sally Wood's direction proves fluid, appropriately understated, and entirely natural in its staging. The play, which is framed by Henry McCoy's two reflective monologues, opens with a series of two and three character scenes, before it finally builds in the second act to a fugue of exchange and emotion is beautifully paced and admirably varied in subtle dynamics. Anita Stewart provides the evocative decor which makes use of projections as well as constructed units to conjure up the contrasting worlds of New York City and rural Maine. The most impressive of these structures is the half built arc which looms over the Donahue backyard, skeletal, yet magical with its twinkling lights and aura of hope and unfulfilled dreams. Shannon Zura complements the design with naturalistic lighting, and Chris Fitze's soundscape adds dimension to the whole. Clinton O'Dell's costumes are place and character appropriate.

The six-person cast does a fine job of bringing Wood's sympathetic characters to life. Tom Bloom is jaded and entitled as the mill's owner, Henry John McCoy, whose chilly façade gradually thaws as the play progresses. Justine Salata strikes just the right note as his outwardly caustic and inwardly vulnerable daughter Emily, who yearns for her father's love and attention as she heals from the loss of her mother and her sense of direction. Daniel Noel gives a nicely nuanced performance as Ernie Donahue, a loveably gruff bear of a man, perilously afloat in his sense of impending loss of his cancer-stricken wife and of the job that has sustained him and his family for forty years. The arc that he builds to no apparent purpose represents his desperate attempt to navigate these uncharted waters. Lisa Stathoplos offers a radiant account of his gentle, illness-ravaged wife Marie, who gives the family its inner strength and the play its moral voice. Peter Albrink as their anguished son, Jake, and Moira Driscoll as their acerbic neighbor, Nancy Letourneau, round out the ensemble.

Portland Stage's championing of this fine new work is praiseworthy. It, like so many of its offerings, speaks to larger social and human issues. In this case, there is a particular relevance for Maine audiences, but Monica Wood's Papermaker is more than a play with touching local color. Rather, it is a work with universal resonance that sees the heroic in the mundane and probes the crises of conscience that confront all human beings.

Photos Courtesy Portland Stage

Papermaker runs from April 21 - May 24, 2015 at Portland Stage, 25 Forrest Ave, Portland, ME 207-774-0465 www.portlandstage.org

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