True North Theatre’s latest production, “Once Upon a Bride There Was a Forest” at the Cyrus Pavilion Theatre at the University of Maine, can’t make up its mind what it wants to be.
There aren’t enough laughs to make it a fractured fairy tale, it’s not scary enough to win an endorsement from Stephen King and there’s not a romance hot enough for it to get picked up by the Hallmark channel.
The six-member cast creates a fine ensemble but the actors and the company’s excellent technical team weren’t able Saturday night to overcome the flaws in Kristen Palmer’s 2014 script to deliver a punch to the gut the way the group did in January with “Picnic,” a 1953 William Inge play.
Palmer uses many elements from fairy tales — a dark forest, a woman on a search, a long lost father, separated sweethearts and an evil step-mother — to tell her story, but it’s not clear what the moral is or why the audience should care about these characters’ journeys.
The play begins with Josie (Moira Beale) finally agreeing to marry her longtime beau Warren, (Jake Sherburne) but only after she goes in search of her missing father. When her car breaks down in the woods, she finds a house populated by a butler listed in the program only as The Man (Tellis Coolong), who tells her the family is expecting a nanny to deal with a perpetually crying infant that only Josie can soothe. Eugenia (Angela Bonacasa), her husband Everett (Mark Bilyk) and their spunky daughter Belle (Gracie Farrar) also live there but together they resemble the creepy Adams Family more than the allegedly happy and healthy ones on network television in the 1950s.
The cast is uniformly excellent. Beale beautifully captures Josie’s naivete and confusion. Bonacasa is frighteningly menacing as the evil mother who craves and carves out silence. Bilyk quietly portrays Everett’s stoicism and Coolong is delightful as a lurking but tender presence.
But it is Farrar as Belle who gives the show what little spark it has. Her bouncy portrayal of the spirited young woman oblivious to her family’s foibles is a bright star in the dark sky the playwright created. The young actress is a joy to behold.
As always, the technical team of Hobbs (scenic design), Scout Hough (lighting design), Deb Ashmore (costume design) and Christoper Duff (sound design) uses the space to the production’s advantage. Together, they create a spooky atmosphere that invites and repels theatergoers at the same time.
One of the reasons “Picnic” was so compelling, despite its mostly antiquated view of women being unfulfilled without a man, was its fast pacing. D. Granke, who directed that production, cut the intermission and got the run time down to 95 minutes without cutting any dialogue. Tricia A. Hobbs, who directs “Once Upon a Bride There was a Forest,” would have been wise to follow his example. Her show drags in the middle of both acts and the intermission wouldn’t be necessary if the actors picked up the pace of the action and the set and costume changes were faster.
The audience in the Cyrus Pavilion sits above and on three sides of the stage. In previous productions, that closeness has provided intimacy, as if the audience was eavesdropping on what happens on stage. Oddly, that feeling is lacking in this production but it was impossible to glean exactly why.
This production is an unusual misstep for the 7-year-old theater company. True North has consistently breathed new life into classic plays from “Picnic” to “The Odd Couple” to “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” while also introducing audiences to 21st century works such as “Circle Mirror Transformation.”
In January, the company will present Lillian Hellman’s 1934 “The Children’s Hour.” Fans of 20th century vintage theater may want to wait until then to see their next True North production.
True North Theatre’s production of “Once Upon a Bride There Was a Forest” will be performed at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday and at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Cyrus Pavilion, 6 Sebago Road, at the University of Maine in Orono. For information, visit truenorththeatre.com or call 619-4833.
