Focusing on the experiences of some of the greatest figures in English literature, Kristina Leach’s Grasmere, a theatrical docudrama that weaves historical facts with speculative fiction, can only work if the chamber ensemble of four actors truly comprehends the actual legacy to which they have been tasked to interpret on stage. In the case of Voodoo Theatre Company’s production, directed by Tracy Callahan, the results deserve summa cum laude honors. With Leach’s intellectual history gem of a script, all four actors find the precise poetic rhythms in their performances.
A play which arose from a 1998 commission, Grasmere is foremost about the profound sibling relationship of WIlliam Wordsworth, ranked among England’s greatest laureates, and Dorothy, a writer in her own right whose influence on his career was inestimable. It is set in 1802 in The Lakes District location referenced in the play’s title.
The two other characters are poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, with whom Wordsworth would establish a friendship that would last the rest of their lives, and Mary Hutchinson, whom Wordsworth married in 1802. Beyond that, many of the events depicted in the play are fiction for emotional and dramatic purposes, but they are also designed to amplify our appreciation for the historical realities of these great literary figures.
The fact is that Mary was not at Grasmere in 1802 and in the following year, William, Dorothy and Coleridge went on a tour of the Highlands while Mary stayed at home tending to her baby’s needs. For those interested in reading more about the Grasmere journal, Lucy Newlyn’s 2013 book All in Each Other is impeccably researched.
One of Wordsworth’s greatest poems, I wandered lonely as a cloud, was inspired by Dorothy, who wrote about the daffodils in the journal during the spring of 1802. Mary suggested the last two lines of the poem. Leach’s speculating choices for her script are very good, considering that Newlyn’s book, which also speculates about the dynamics of the role that each person played in the writing of this poem, was published a solid dozen years after the play’s premiere.
One could not have asked for better actors to do justice to Leach’s script. Carleton Bluford as William and Latoya Cameron as Dorothy delve with first-rate credibility into this unique relationship. William is undoubtedly indebted to the “constraining and softening” powers of his sister. In his 1887 book. Dorothy Wordsworth, The Story of a Sister’s Love, Edmund Lee shared a quote from a contemporary observer about Dorothy that echoes in the interactions on stage that Bluford and Cameron have in their roles:
[It] was not that she visibly or consciously aided and stimulated him, but that she was him— a second pair of eyes to see, a second and more delicate intuition to discern which is the brother and which the sister. She was part not only of his life, but of his imagination. He saw by her, felt through her, at her touch the strings of the instrument began to thrill, the great melodies awoke. Her journals are Wordsworth in prose, as his poems are Dorothy in verse. The one soul kindled at the other.
The drama of Grasmere is rendered beautifully throughout the performance. Tyson Baker as Coleridge and Anne Louise Brings as Mary are equals to Bluford and Cameron. With his unbroken addiction to opium and frequent bouts of depression, Coleridge was beset by hostile critics who found his original version of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner as stodgy and laborious. He worked obsessively for years on revising it, feeling endlessly hopeless that none of his works could ever rise to the reputation as a magnum opus.
Voodoo Theatre Company’s production is excellent for eliciting the psychological underpinnings of all four characters— the unassailable powers of deep sibling affection, the emotions of self- and mutual- sacrifice, the nostalgia pulses to sustain the blissful stability, the fear of failure and the heartbreak of change and loss. Performances continue this weekend at the Studio 5400 theater in the Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center in Taylorsville. For tickets and more information, see the Voodoo Theatre Company website.
Thank you Les! So glad you could attend!
I like your reviews. They usually come after the event has closed. It would be more beneficial to me and the productions if you could post your reviews before they close giving the date of closure and a link to the theater. I usually stop reading half way because disappointed that i had missed. I appreciate your detailed analysis and do want you to continue.
Quite the contrary.