Who doesn’t have a secret locked up in an attic somewhere?
In Jen Silverman’s The Moors, the slightly deranged love child of the Brontës, Waiting For Godot, and Six, Emilie the governess (Blessing Adedijo) arrives at a manor amidst the titular plains to find that nothing is quite as she expected. Branwell, her supposed employer and warmhearted correspondent, is nowhere to be found, nor is the child she expects to teach.
Instead, she finds a pair of sisters: Agatha (Raquel Duffy), a hard-edged, shrewd woman as pitiless as the surrounding landscape, and Huldey (Lindsey Middleton), her fame-obsessed but talent-free sister. Her fellow staff consists of a single maid (Erin Humphry) whose identity completely changes depending on which room in which she appears—while the rooms themselves are all exactly identical. Meanwhile, the household’s frighteningly large dog (Jack Copland, looking very human in his Victorian suit) tries to contact God, even if there’s only a clumsy moor-hen (Heeyun Park 박희윤) around to listen to his philosophical musings.
Riot King often punches above its weight in providing intimate, well-crafted theatrical experiences, and director Bryn Kennedy’s version of The Moors is no exception. It’s quirky to the extreme, but if you can dig a show featuring both Gothic vibes and a bright pink faux fur-covered pen, the production is full of delights.
The Moors has many tonal similarities to Silverman’s Witch, which Soulpepper tackled earlier this year. It’s arch, dark, full of anachronisms (like the aforementioned faux fur pen) and has a vaguely apocalyptic air of unreality about it. Both shows toy with genre, Witch an adaptation of a Jacobean revenge tragedy, The Witch of Edmonton, and The Moors a sort of twisted Jane Eyre. Both stories feature nonhuman characters (including talking dogs) that try to put the ridiculousness of humanity into perspective. The plays also have similar structures, mostly splitting the cast into pairs and running three parallel stories that occasionally crash together.
While I admired the ambition and production values of Witch, I found its script to be a mess, important conversations and character moments seemingly taking place offstage to be vaguely reported later, cringe-causing humour based on awkward exchanges and sudden vulgarities that were more embarrassing than shocking, too many attempted and aborted themes, and a title character whose desire to bring about the end of the world seemed more petty than interesting.
The Moors benefits from the entertaining, absurd parts of Silverman’s style with a more coherent script; being somewhat less ambitious actually works in its favour. This show knows what it’s about, and while there are some disconnects, the themes run strong. It’s about the destructive power of loneliness and ennui, but also the destructive power of expecting happiness to last without end, instead of letting sorrow and joy coexist to better appreciate them both. It’s about clawing so desperately to hold onto what you want that you obliterate it instead. It’s reminiscent of the tale of the scorpion that sinks its own living lifeboat, stinging the frog because its nature can’t be helped.
The show also benefits from its excellent cast, who gleefully embody the wacky characters with sincerity rather than distancing irony or amplified mugging. Adedijo plays the outsider that helps us calibrate our understanding of the setup, but is no cowering flower despite the constant disappointments; she quickly takes ownership of what she can, finding chemistry with Duffy’s Agatha and prowling around with a satisfied smile. Duffy shows both Agatha’s casual cruelty and her longing for love, the latter not softening the cruelty so much as redirecting it.
Middleton’s manic, empty stare amplifies her eagerness to please and desperation for others to take her insipid diary seriously, more Jane Airhead than Jane Eyre. Huldey’s gullibility seems to have no bounds, as she’s manipulated by the deadpan Humphry, who gives us one of the more scheming, murderous maids this side of Jean Genet. While the end of Huldey’s arc is a little murky, Middleton’s rendition of her climactic villain’s song (where the Six comparison comes in) is extremely memorable. Huldey seems more like a puppy than Copeland’s scene-stealing dog, whose tender scenes with his new, first friend are laced with the menace of the inevitability of the food chain.
Bryn Kennedy’s set (The Rooms?) is atmospheric and feels Victorian without needing to be too elaborate; it also provides good cover for proffered visual surprises and actions that must remain unseen. Madeline Ius’ costumes echo the period-esque vibes and are gradually shed as things come unravelled, adding some striking anachronisms like a blood-repelling Patrick Bateman-esque plastic clothes cover that’s also a bodycon dress.
If you like your Gothic fiction with a side of anarchy, The Moors might just be up your alley…or, perhaps, your attic.
Photo of Lindsey Middleton and Blessing Adedijo by Juniper Simpson Serrano
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