Gleefully Unhinged Performances Abound

The Moors – A Red Orchid Theatre

The prolific playwright and fiction writer, Jen Silverman has, in her 2017 play entitled “The Moors,” crafted a clever and very funny feminist one-act comedy. Set in the upland area of northeastern Yorkshire, the play both mirrors and parodies the lives and writings of those 19th century British wunderkinds, the Bronte sisters. Set in an apparently Escher-like manor house, where each room of the mansion is identical to the next one, two sisters, their maids, and a mastiff named Mastiff, survive the English wilderness, somewhere out on the titular Moors. This black comedy is also kind of an homage to the Theatre of the Absurd of Ionesco. 

There’s a distinct sense of mystery and foreboding about this strange place, where the winds howl and the rain beats against the windows. The land is dotted with dangerous cliffs, threatening bogs of quicksand and thorny gorse plants. The only wildlife seems to the Moor-Hen, who continually flies into the walls of the manse and are knocked senseless. But a ray of sunshine is about to arrive.

When the lights come up, we meet elder sister Agatha (portrayed with constant annoyance and ill temper by the wonderful Karen Aldridge) and her younger, ditzy sister Huldey (played with adolescent enthusiasm by Christina Gorman). She wanders the house, dreaming of finding romance and fame someday. Huldey keeps an insipidly-written diary from which she enjoys reading aloud to anyone willing to listen. Sitting around the giant fireplace in the drawing room, the two sisters spat and squabble, as Agatha and The Mastiff (played with droll sobriety by Guy Van Swearingen) snarl and snap at each other. Agatha announces, to Huldey’s delight, that she’s expecting the arrival of a governess named Emilie (embodied by a delightfully bubbly and optimistic Audrey Billings). It’s not clear for whom this governess is intended; there’s no child present—or maybe “it’s in the other room.” Puzzling, bizarre and unsettling. 

When lovely, eternally hopeful Emilie arrives, all decked out from head to toe in bright pink lace, she’s curious as to why she’s been hired. There doesn’t seem to be any children in this all-female household, although sometimes a baby can be heard crying somewhere in the manor house. After the correspondence she’d had with someone named Branwel (the name of the Bronte sisters’ actual, browbeating brother), Emilie clearly expected to find a handsome Heathcliff-like man waiting to greet her. When she inquires about him, Emilie is told that he’s been dead for months—or maybe he’s imprisoned in the attic—who knows or cares?

Throughout the next hour and forty minutes, Emilie attempts to bring a modicum of positive energy and happiness to the house. She sings and plays her guitar, she tries to engage the sisters in pleasant conversation and has several curiously comical encounters with Marjory—or is it Mallory—the wild, eccentric chamber/scullery maid. Just as every room in the house looks identical, so every servant resembles this singular, scowling and sinister woman (wonderfully played by the insanely talented Jen Engstrom). Between a few bizarre interludes between The Mastiff and a befuddled Moor-Hen (portrayed with appropriate avian aloofness by Dado), the play builds to a unexpected climax, a double-whammy that no one will see coming and will leave audiences gobsmacked. 

Kirsten Fitzgerald, a gifted character actress herself and A Red Orchid company member, has directed this production with passion and an eye and ear for the play’s absurdist quality. The production is filled with anachronisms, which infuse the story with comedy. Ms Fitzgerald’s excellent at building the suspense and accentuating the comedy in this play, while always keeping the parody of this patriarchal period in the forefront. Scenic Designer Milo Blue’s drawing room setting is awesome, while still remaining detailed, dark and sinister. Pay special attention to the collection of perplexing paintings that adorn the walls, or the dried vines and brambles that scale the enormous hearth and suggest the thorny vegetation of the Moors. 

Lighting Designer K. Story designed an appropriately eerie plot that both illuminates the room and casts shadows over the mysterious elements. Jeffrey Levin has blended an authentic combination of sounds that help create the savage, windblown English wilderness. And Costumer Myron Elliott-Cisneros has fashioned some incredible period livery for this production. His austere, black 19th century gown for Agatha is whimsically accented with contemporary zippers, adorned at odd angles. He especially leaves his creative mark on Emilie’s frilly, fuchsia frock, that looks like an toilet seat cover from the 1960’s. And his feathery creation for Dado delightfully suggests the disheveled demeanor of the scatterbrained little Moor-Hen.

This wonderful production of Jen Silverman’s unconventional black comedy, beautifully directed with skill and flair, makes a fine show for returning to A Red Orchid Theatre, following months of a pandemic shutdown. Proof of full vaccination and masks are required by the audience, to keep everyone healthy and safe. But patrons won’t be safe from enjoying the gleefully unhinged performances that abound in this crazy female power struggle, parodied in this absurd, anachronistic theatrical world.  

Highly Recommended

Reviewed by Colin Douglas

Presented January 6-February 27 by A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells, Chicago.

Tickets are available by calling 312-943-8722 or by going to www.aredorchidtheatre.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.