Tempting Providence

This is the fourth in my series of GMTF Reviews. I came back to camp for a week in Cow Head expressly so that I could take in these productions. It’s too bad that the owners of the Seabreeze RV Park are even more remotely from away than I as I’d like more local contact. The museum that marks Nurse Bennett’s home in Daniels Harbour is not yet open or I’d have visited it in preparation for seeing this play. This community of about 300 which she made her centre of operations is again threatened by landslides caused by the erosion of the clay cliffs that front the sea.

The offspring of a famous woman, (Elenore Roosevelt I believe), was being interviewed and asked about the privilege it must have been to grow up with such a Mother and replied, “But I had to live with her”. Even Nurse Myra Bennett would have difficulty today living up to her legend. Dubbed the Florence Nighting Gale of the North, she came to Newfoundland to minister to the medical needs of a people separated by hundreds of miles of rugged geography from any other care; married a local man; and bore him three children. I’d be curious to hear about the lives these offspring led. The play attempts to introduce us to the woman behind the legend. The nurse who hid her insecurities behind a formal professionalism; the homesick young woman far from home; and the lady in need of male companionship.

The set is comprised of a bed sheet, one simple kitchen table, and four pressed-back chairs on a cushioned stage floor. What the actors are able to construct with these simple materials and mime without benefit of any other props is amazing. The actors clad entirely in white costumes spend the entire play on stage standing in the background when not engaged in playing a part and all participate in arranging their set pieces folding that single sheet into a wedding dress, bassinet, receiving blanket, backpack, and bedsheet--well may it have a few wrinkles when it resumes life as a tablecloth.

GMTF productions are ensemble pieces with each actor often playing multiple parts. We get the sense that they enjoy working with each other and playing to a home-town audience. There are no strangers in Newfoundland, only friends who haven’t met yet. I’m grateful to have had this opportunity to receive incite into the lives of people who confront hardship with cheerful grace and take life as it is.