I am so behind in my blog posts right now, in no small part because I have had a really fun summer, with a lot of hiking, backpacking, camping, and travel. I will eventually catch up, I think, but for now my posts will be a good bit after the fact.
My wife wanted to see this particular production because one of her knitting friends was in it. I will tag along with her for nearly everything, so I did.
I had never heard of this play, or Matthew Barber - in fact, he doesn’t even have his own wikipedia page. His most famous play, Enchanted April, does have a short one, so that came up.
Fireflies is based on a novel, Eleanor and Abel, by Annette Sanford, who I also had never heard of and who likewise lacks a wikipedia page. Apparently, she was a romance novel writer. What both Sanford and Barber have in common is that a web search turns up other people with their names - a community organizer and a singer, respectively - before their names.
Sorry, I got a bit off topic, but stuff like this comes up when I try to research the titles I write about.
The play has a small cast - just four characters - and one character who is literally on stage the entire time.
That person is Eleanor, played by the always-excellent Julie Gaines. She is a retired schoolteacher, who may be in the early stages of dementia, but who is definitely suffering from depression and boredom.
Her neighbor, Grace (Cathy Henry), is worried about her, and also watches her house with the tenacity that only the town gossip can.
Into their lives comes a mysterious drifter, Abel (Michael Purcell), who fixes some things for Eleanor, including damage to her vacant rental house.
He offers to remodel the rental in exchange for the right to live there while he does. In the process, Eleanor finds herself possibly falling in love with him.
The final character is Eugene, the local law enforcement guy and a former student of Eleanor’s.
There is a lot of ambiguity in this play. Is Abel a con artist? Or is he just a misunderstood and maligned man existing on the margins of society?
Is Eleanor starting to lose her memory and her faculties? Or is the boredom of retirement, loneliness, and the depression that follows simply eating away at her?
At what point should a person - an elderly woman - be allowed to make her own mistakes and choices?
This is a gentle play. The drama is ordinary, the small town setting familiar. It is devoid of any real violence (Abel does get his face slapped, but to be fair, he had it coming.) A kiss is as racy as it gets. It doesn’t preach, it just leaves room for complexity and shades of grey.
Unsurprisingly, Julie Gaines carried this play with her acting. Everything else played off of that. Michael Purcell is apparently returning to the stage after a number of years working as an ASL interpreter, and he based his folksy Abel in part on his late brother, who was a bit like the character. After the show, a few in the audience said that Cathy Henry’s character sounded like certain relatives of theirs, which is a high compliment indeed. Jordan Fulmer rounded out the cast in a small part, played with an understated realism that fit the play.
BCT always has great sets for plays set in modern times - and I swear they have 80 years worth of garage sales in their props department to go with it. It is fun to get there early and just soak in all the details.
With all of this, of course, comes a dedicated and talented behind the scenes crew. I decided to go with the picture BCT posted of the cast (seated) and crew (standing) because the team deserves some love.
I will also mention that this particular performance did have ASL interpreters, which was a really nice addition. JJ Gomez and Courtney Henson put a lot of acting into their performances, art in its own right.
This show is already over (I told you I was behind), but there are other ones coming up this season, and I hope to get to a few of them. We are also getting into college theater season again, so stay tuned to see which of them I was able to fit into my fall music schedule.
For BCT’s season, check out bctstage.org.
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