The 70th Annual Provincial Drama Festival wrapped up on April 27, after a jam-packed week of shows from theatre troupes from across the province.
Seven groups – School Zone Productions from St. John’s, Mokami Players from Happy Valley-Goose Bay, St. John’s Players from St. John’s, Off-Broadway Players from Corner Brook, Avion Players from Gander, Northern Lights Theatre Company from Labrador West, and Northcliffe Drama Club from Grand Falls-Windsor – performed shows from playwrights like Ireland’s Martin McDonagh, America’s Annie Baker, Canadians David Belke, Peter Colley and Daniel MacIvor, and local legend Andy Jones.
Before each mainstage production, a “Curtain Riser” show was held in the Barbara Barrett Theatre, featuring talent from more local troupes, like the O’Donel High Drama Club, High Street Productions, Salt Teeth Theatre Company, plus comedians Christopher Dunn and Nicholas Masters and Improv NL.
Two shows were on the docket at the Arts and Culture Centre on Friday, April 26. In the basement theatre, Salt Teeth Theatre Company put on their townie tale “Cookstown,” and later on the mainstage, Labrador West’s Northern Lights Theatre Company performed “A Skull in Connemara,” a dark comedy written by Ireland’s Martin McDonagh.
“Cookstown,” written by and starring Darren Ivany, was just as funny the second time around, having seen the show in September 2018 during the St. John’s Short Plays Festival. “Cookstown” was the standout show from the 11 plays reviewed of the 22 shows in the 2018 festival.
“A Skull in Connemara” stands out as a particularly topical tale in the 2019 Provincial Drama Festival. The play focuses on Mick Dowd, a gravedigger annually assigned the gruesome task of disinterring bodies to make more room in the small local cemetery.
Before the show began, audience membered tittered about recent local headlines regarding some illegal graveyard skullduggery – pun intended – in Conception Bay South.
Though the Labrador West troupe was from out of town, the Northern Lights Theatre Company was aware of the recent controversy, making a note in the program that no actual graves were disinterred during the performance.
In the Martin McDonagh play, the audience is a fly on the wall to the day-to-day goings-on of Mick Dowd, and other locals, like religious/bingo fanatic Mary Johnny, and her “eejit” (idiot) grandson Martain and try-hard local cop Thomas.
Through profanity-laced dialogue, the audience learns of Dowd’s dark history, and the untimely passing of his wife Una, who died in a drunk-driving accident with Dowd at the wheel.
This year, Dowd is tasked with disinterring his late wife, amidst circulating rumours that Una’s death was not from a car accident, but at the hands of her husband.
Elaborate sets illustrated Dowd’s humble home and the local graveyard, with genius prop use and stage blocking helping overshadow the imitation Irish accents, at times difficult to hear and understand a few rows back from the stage.
Difficulties continued when attempting to follow the convoluted plotline of the show’s second half, in which the murder mystery may have been solved – one can assume the onus falls on the playwright for that.
Despite those difficulties, Northern Lights Theatre Company certainly entertained and inspired many laughs from the gathered crowd.
