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by Deirdre Kinahan, directed by Brenda Bazinet

Here For Now Theatre, Marquee at Stratford Perth Museum, Stratford

August 2-16, 2024

Máire: “Jesus, where are you?”

Stratford’s small-scale Here For Now Theatre has gained a large-scale reputation for presenting some of the finest plays of any summer theatre company in Ontario. The Saviour by Irish playwright Deirdre Kinahan is another of these plays. Torontonians will be familiar with Kinahan from the exciting ARC production of her play Moment (2011) in 2014. The Saviour itself is remarkably constructed and emotionally wrenching, but it also allows veteran actor Rosemary Dunsmore the chance to give her greatest ever performance. This is another riveting drama to set beside Here For Now’s thrilling production of Dennis Kelly’s Girls & Boys in 2022.

The play, first broadcast in 2021 during the pandemic, revolves around the character of Máire, a widow and grandmother, who is celebrating her 67th birthday. She is in her nightgown in bed and happier than she than been for years. She had sex last night with a younger man, Martin, who has told her to stay in bed while he makes coffee for her. Never has she been treated so well, either in bed or in terms of general kindness.

All this Máire, a deeply devout Roman Catholic, confesses aloud to Jesus who she says has been her truest friend and closest confidant throughout her life. Máire thinks that bringing Martin into her life must have been part of Jesus’s plan. Máire’s reflections on her present happiness, however, naturally lead her to recall her previous unhappiness. This includes the death of her mother and her father’s abandoning her in a convent in Stanhope Street in Dublin which was one of the infamous Magdalene Laundries.

In Ireland the Magdalene Laundries were established in the 18th century and continued operating into the 20th century. Initially, they were established for “fallen women”, but over time they were used by families for ridding themselves of unwanted relations such as orphans, the mentally handicapped or any woman deemed to be socially dysfunctional. Most were run by The Roman Catholic Church with state funding as asylums, but rather than caring for the inmates, the institutions used them as slave labour in their laundries where they were worked until they died or could escape. In 1993 a mass grave of 155 women was discovered on the convent grounds of one of the laundries and finally led to a government investigation into the horrific abuse that had been occurring in these religious establishments.

It is while working in one of these laundries that Máire began to converse with Jesus. She says her Jesus was kind and compassionate, not like nuns’ “Jesus [who] seeped through the walls and watched…always watched…and judged…and ratted you out…and spotted your soul….and punished, condemned”. Máire was saved from her life there when her now-deceased husband Colm saw her, fell in love and married her. She gave birth to two children, a boy and girl, but her life became one of drudgery as her husband sank into alcoholism.

Depressed by this contemplation of the past, Máire tries to recall her earlier euphoria and how Martin has become her “salvation” from the drab, meaningless life she had been leading. Halfway through the 70-minute-long play, we and Máire begin to wonder what’s taking Martin so long to make coffee.

At this point Máire’s son Mel arrives with a birthday present. The present is a doll dressed like the one that the nuns confiscated when Máire entered the convent and does not restore Máire’s happiness as Mel had hoped. Mel’s purpose, however, is really to bring Máire bad news. Mel and his sister have been suspicious of Martin ever since he began spending so much time with Máire. Mel and his husband Jack have begun looking into Martin’s past and discovered that he is an ex-con and a dangerous man.

Máire’s view is that if he is an ex-con, he has done his time and repented his sin, and even if he is a sinner she has forgiven him. More galling for Mel is that Máire cannot forgive Mel for his sin of homosexuality. With a series of ever more dreadful revelations, the play swiftly moves to a devastating conclusion.

Kinahan has taken a bold step in breaking the action into two distinct parts. For the first half of the action we are quite happy with the play as a solo play filled with comedy about having sex at her age until Máire’s mind turns toward the past. In this half Kinahan shows Máire’s life and world as she has constructed it. Her belief in her direct access to Jesus is a major part of the comedy until we realize that Máire’s belief in a personal saviour has been the lifeline that has got her through the worst part of her life. Máire’s belief in “her” Jesus who is different from the nuns’ Jesus points to a contradiction in Máire’s convictions of which she seems quite unaware.

This contradiction carries to the next two men she considers as "saviours” – her late husband, and now Martin. When Mel appears, Kinahan has him present to Máire and us an entirely different view of what Martin is and of Máire’s own view of herself. Since we have come to sympathize with Máire for the first half of the play, Mel’s information comes as much as a shock to us as it does to Máire. Mel, too, is a would-be saviour, but he demands that she give up Martin whom she has already dubbed as a saviour. Máire’s choice at the end is between belief in Martin or belief in Mel.

As this synopsis should indicate, the role of Máire is incredibly rich. The character makes a 180º transition from gleeful ecstasy at the beginning to profound despair at the end. The breadth of the role gives Rosemary Dunsmore the chance to explore a more diverse range of emotions than any role she has had before. From beginning to end Dunsmore beautifully conveys complex, ever-changing mixtures of emotions. In the early part of the play her joy and embarrassment collide in her description to Jesus of the pleasure she has enjoyed in having unexpected sex at her age. Máire is certain that something so good can’t be wrong.

Yet, Dunsmore also shows that to a woman with a damaged childhood, recollection of pleasure naturally leads to recollection of pain. When Dunsmore’s Máire conjures up the horrors of living in the convent and working in the laundry, she shifts from playing a senior woman to being a child again suffering from abandonment and forced labour. When Mel arrives, Dunsmore brilliantly depicts how Máire moves from outrage at what Mel tells her about Martin to a feeling she tries to suppress that Mel may be right. Dunsmore’s depiction of the battle between truth and self-delusion in Máire is what makes the play absolutely riveting.

Robert Gerow, who happens to be Dunsmore’s son in real life, gives a strong confident performance as Máire’s son Mel. Gerow, too, is adept at conveying conflicting emotions. From his first entrance when it seems all Mel wants to do is to wish Máire a happy birthday, Gerow shows that some other concern is preying on Mel’s mind. Gerow makes clear that Mel loves his mother but that he must tell her information that he knows she will find distressing. The more Máire balks at hearing what Mel has to say, the more disturbing the details are about Martin that Mel is forced to reveal. Gerow shows what Máire’s anger at him only produces more anger mixed with fear and pity in Mel.

Director Brenda Bazinet has made Máire’s solo confession and her encounter with Mel feel completely natural. Fiona Mongillo has designed a set that cleverly can be altered to form Máire’s bedroom in the first half and Máire’s kitchen in the second. Bazinet begins the play by having Gerow set the stage as Máire’s bedroom, unrolling the carpet , making the bed, putting furniture in its place. He snaps his fingers and the stage lights go on. Having a son literally set the stage for a play about his mother will likely remind most audience members of the beginning of Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1944). In Williams what we see is meant to be the son’s recollection of events of the past that still haunt him. It may be that Bazinet is seeking the same effect in The Saviour. Its prime benefit to the play is to introduce the character of Mel right at the start so that his later appearance is not a surprise but feels inevitable.

It is amazing how Kinahan has combined so many large themes into such a short two-person work. Not only is the play about the both the solace and misuse of religion but about the reason behind an unwillingness to see the truth and about the limits of forgiveness. Directed with such clarity by Bazinet and played with such intensity by Dunsmore and Gerow, this is the play currently running at Stratford that must not be missed.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Rosemary Dunsmore as Máire; Robert Gerow as Mel. © 2024 Ann Baggley.

For tickets visit: www.herefornowtheatre.com.