BWW Interview: Soulstice's SEA MARKS Writes Irish Love Letters to Audiences

The former star of television's "Adventures in Paradise" Gardner McKay, also an author, sailor and man of the sea his entire life, wrote Sea Marks in 1981. The two person play portrays an unlikely couple, one living in Ireland, and the other in Liverpool, past their passionate youth who revive the age-old art of writing love letters to woo. While Gardner wrote his play in the 21st century, and subsequently won a LA Drama Circles' Critics Award, the 1960's setting remains more than half a century removed from contemporary cell phones with email and texting at one's fingertips. Soulstice Theatre stages the heartwarming, winsome play in their intimate St. Francis Theater with winning results.

A perfect play to produce near St. Patrick's festival day, this Irish romance reveals the lives of Colm Primrose, a bachelor fisherman living on a secluded island off Ireland, Cliffhorn Heads and Timothea Stiles, a Welsh girl transported to Liverpool and working in the publishing business. Having exchanged glances and a few words at a wedding once upon a time, Colm begins romancing Timothea with words--letters-- for a year and a half before another wedding brings them face to face. And lucky for Timothea, and her publisher, in Colm's letters, "he has a touch of the poet, like the Irish do."

McKay's lyrical script adds romantic touches to the new found interest blossoming between Colm and Timothea, a distinct pleasure to listen to. Julie Swenson, Producing Director of Renaissance Theaterworks, gives the finally-in-love again Timothea sophisticated resonance complemented by down home, farm girl frivolity as her character struggles with Colm's continual longing for the sea.

David Ferrie shines after discovering Timothea loves him---."don't you need a woman around the houses/"--and when his numerous letters might transition him to become a permanent Liverpool man, he begins to believe, "You can't be a real man in the city." Ferrie's dramatic and poetic monologue in the second act tells the story of the "fisherman sweater," where each Irish knitter used a special pattern for an individual sea town so if the man washed up at sea, relatives could identify them by the pattern in their sweater. Touching folklore when Ferrie wears one himself, and rails about how the sea takes men away without warning.

In his directorial debut, David Shapiro paces an understated, poignant production allowing McKay's script to carry the momentum through the beautiful voices of these accomplished veteran actors. Adding to the sublime love story, Therese Goode's Celtic fiddle lingers in the performance's background, so the entire evening feels as if this could evolve around an Irish hearth. Ferrie and Swenson connect on stage like that fine tuned fiddle bow to its strings, while Goode's melodies capture the sweet notes of patient love, one where "there's been an empty space in my bed for so long.""

The final scenes in McKay's story remember people who have lived alone for most of their lives, left to wonder where their home remains and what their hearts love above all else. Colm says to Timothea when he's tucked away in her Liverpool cottage, "I love the sea," And as he told her, "The sea is not a woman,...the sea is not simple and the place not sentimental."

Sea Marks and Solstice Theatre provide true romance instead of sentimentality which could inspire someone to write a love letter of their own (instead of merely a brief text). whether to their own favorite spot of sea, a way of life, or for another person, in the here and now, or merely kept in the heart. This evocative production writes eloquently of Irish loss and love, and two people finding their way in waves of emotion that will leave a mark on the audience's heart like the water on the sand when the ocean waters recede--a mark where the essence of a person's soul forever remains when washed over by love.

Soulstice Theatre presents Sea Marks through March 26 in St. Francis, 3770 South Pennsylvania Avenue, #2. . For information on the upcoming production The Secret Garden or tickets for this performance, please visit: www.soulsticetheatre.org.