The University's drama department launched its "RecentWorks" series last week with a Helms Theatre production of the modern tragedy By the Bog of Cats, which is based loosely on the Greek myth of Medea and tells the story of Hester Swane, a hardened outcast whose gypsy mother abandoned her as a child. The play takes place in a small, secluded village in the Irish countryside, beside a mysterious swamp known as the Bog of Cats. Carthage Killbride, her long-term lover and the father of her child, is now leaving her to marry the timid daughter of a wealthy landowner and seeks to evict her from their house and take their daughter into his own custody. But Hester Swane will not budge, choosing instead to wage war upon the community.
The play is full of powerful artistic images - it opens with the dark, mythic image of Hester Swane dragging a dead black swan through the snow and ends with rose petals scattered among the snow instead of blood. Just as elements of witchcraft permeate the Medea myth, elements of the supernatural lurk within the play in the form of lonely ghosts who roam the bog, seeking to communicate with those who can hear them.
The set itself is quite ghastly, a mostly bare stage covered in snow, with translucent swaths of cloth hanging down from above and occasional light snowfalls drifting down upon the strikingly minimalist set.
The scenes are connected by musicians playing Irish folk songs, from dark, slow numbers filled with eerie vocalizing to lively wedding dances that give the audience a real sense of the culture that the characters inhabit. The characters' accents also contribute to the audience's sense of place, and although the accents fluctuated in quality, all of the main actors maintained consistent and authentic Irish accents.
Laura Rikard played the lead role of Hester Swane masterfully, portraying her convincingly as a complex character full of longing and defiance. Even as her darker secrets are revealed and her actions become more and more erratic, the audience still sympathizes with her throughout. Likewise, Hester's 7-year-old daughter Josie was played by the young Samantha Scott with surprising skill and vibrancy. In such a heavy tragedy, much-needed comic relief is offered by several outrageous minor characters - an alcoholic, pajama-wearing priest (Doug Dunphy), Carthage's shrieky, overbearing mother (Mia Joshi) and, my favorite, the Catwoman (Andrew Cronacher), the clairvoyant crazy cat lady who laps wine from a saucer and crunches live mice as if they were potato chips. These characters balance out the tragic events of the play, so that the audience is juggled between light comedy and heavy tragedy so often that by the end we leave the theater feeling dazed by all of the bipolar emotions we've been put through.
Although the tragic events of the play mirror the melodrama of the Medea myth, this retelling transfers epic tragedy to a more personal and relatable level. Part-Greek myth, part-realistic small-town tragedy and part-Irish ghost story, By the Bog of Cats is an eclectic brew that serves up the whole range of human emotion.
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