Posted on Mon, Feb. 02, 2009

'Bridegroom' is a celebration of storytelling

BY CHRISTINE DOLEN
Storytelling is at the heart of theater, that sometimes-magical place where words can draw us into worlds very different from our own.
Catherine Trieschmann's The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock celebrates the transportive, seductive power of storytelling even as the playwright spins her own tale of life in the North Carolina mountains at the ragged end of the Civil War.
Now getting an impeccable world premiere production at Florida Stage, Trieschmann's award-winning play was created as a master's thesis in 2001. Though she has since written other plays and worked more on Bridegroom, she has described the characters in this early work as ''archetypal.'' To a degree, that's true.
The widow Elsa Farthing (Lourelene Snedeker) is a mountain mama who's certain she knows best when it comes to the way her grown children should live. Both her blind daughter Laurel (Susan Cato) and Laurel's friend Maizey (Lori Gardner) are itching to get hitched. Elsa's son Jacob (Ricky Waugh) is a man damaged by war in ways that go beyond his obvious injuries. Pastor Burns (Todd Allen Durkin) pines for the disinterested Maizey. And a black Union soldier called The Bridegroom (Donté Bonner) knows that, when it comes to wooing, words can be as potent as kisses.
What makes The Bridegroom of Blowing Rock more than a study of feisty 19th century mountain folk is Treischmann's approach to her story. She burrows into the shifting alliances, family tragedies and thirst for vengeance that tore a nation apart. Humor and sorrow touch both the mythic and the mundane, so that the characters feel more real.
A good deal of the credit for making this first Bridegroom production engaging also goes to director Cathey Crowell Sawyer, the theater's detail-focused design team, and a cast that makes thick mountain accents and colloquial speech patterns sound like a kind of folk music.
Sawyer bridges scenes with snippets of roots-sounding a capella songs of the era, and the woman singer's plaintive voice underscores both sorrows endured and those yet to come. Kent Goetz's stark set of planks and platforms suddenly echoes with the deadly rush of a river, thanks to sound designer Matt Kelly. Mark Pirolo's costumes for the women, dresses dirtied and worn at the hemline, reflect poverty, drawn-out conflict and muddy mountain pathways.
The interplay between Cato and Bonner is lovely to behold. Perhaps if Laurel were sighted, falling for a wandering black soldier would have been more complicated. But because of their circumstances, the Bridegroom helps Laurel ''see'' by painting pictures with words, 'til she becomes a smitten kid who can't wait for the next story.
Gardner's Maizey starts off shallow but goes deeper, showing steel in her determination to have the life and the man she wants. Waugh's Jacob is, at first, both thick and stoic, until love warms and helps heal him. Snedeker's Elsa is fierce, domineering and ultimately heart-breaking.

And Durkin, though he doesn't play one of the thieving ex-soldiers who roam the mountains, gets away with the biggest theft of all, stealing every scene he's in as the less-than-capable, heartbroken pastor.