James Karas
What
a Young Wife Ought to Know,
the title of Hannah Moscovitch’s play, is not posed as a question but as a
statement or perhaps a wish. If the question were what a young working class
wife knew about sex, love, pregnancy
and birth control about one hundred years ago, the answer is simple: almost
nothing.
Moscovitch
tells the story of Sophie (Lisa Repo-Martell), her husband Johnnie (David
Patrick Flemming) and her sister Alma (Rebecca Parent) who live in the back
water city of Ottawa. They have committed the crime of being born poor and
therefore uneducated and therefore condemned to work in jobs that frequently do
not pay even subsistence wages.
Lisa Repo-Martell and David Patrick Flemming, Photo: Timothy Richard
Sophie
addresses the audience directly, husbands and wives separately, and we join her
in her life with her sister and her courtship, marriage and family with Johnny.
Her innocence has a certain pathetic charm when she kisses a dying young man on
the cheek and fears that she may have become pregnant. She is attracted to the
handsome Johnny and haltingly, even comically they consummate their marriage.
Consummate would be a foreign word to her, so let’s say they have sex.
Poverty
and ignorance do not abate their passion but a society that espouses ignorance
and suppression of all knowledge about sex, birth control or abortion and seems
to keep it away completely from the working class as if it were the bubonic
plague is hardly to be sought. Not to mention that it was illegal to provide
birth control information in Canada at that time and for many decades
afterwards.
Children
arrive, alive and stillborn, the Irish immigrant Johnny loses his job as a
stable worker for a hotel, more pregnancies, no information about birth
control, lack of basic necessities such as food arrive. Isn’t life and love
just wonderful?
The
spirit of Alma never leaves Sophie. Alma was gutsy, smarter and fearless. She
became pregnant and put an end to her pregnancy - and her life. Her ghost visits
Sophie as if it were a reminder of the road not taken or the road available to
Sophie. It is frightful proposition.
Moscovitch
tells us in the program that the play is based partly on the book of letters
received by British birth control advocate Dr. Marie Stopes (Dear
Dr. Stopes: Sex in the 1920s). One hundred years later it is hard to
imagine the conditions that prevailed then unless one glances at the life of the
poor in most countries of the world not least of which are parts of some southern
states of what has finally become Great America Again.
Lisa Repo-Martell and Rebecca Parent. Photo: Timothy Richard
From
commentator to pathetic, ignorant and tragic woman, wife and mother
Repo-Martell does a fine job and is well-contrasted with the self-assured Alma
of Rebecca Parent. Flemming as the handsome, macho, ignorant man who faces
social challenges beyond his comprehension and ability to control looks for
means of survival and can find none.
In
the end there is a resolution as Sophie emulates her sister. I will not spoil
the plot for you.
The
play makes its points but it does not flow particularly smoothly. The plot
shows structural weaknesses as it lunges from one point to the next.
The
production is done on a bare stage designed by Andrew Cull with a few props
such as a table. The rest of the atmosphere is handled by the lighting design
of Leigh Ann Vardy.
What
a Young Wife Ought to Know was first produced in Halifax in January 2015 by the Halifax-based 2b Theatre
Company. The production is directed ably by Christian Barry, the Artistic
Co-Director of 2b Theatre Company. It is theatre to see.
________________
What a Young Wife
Ought to Know
by Hannah Moscovitch continues until April 7, 2018 at the Streetcar Crowsnest
Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4M 2T1. http://crowstheatre.com/ or http://www.2btheatre.com/
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