Saline solution

>> The Saidye's Salt-Water Moon is simply sensational

by AMY BARRATT

The Saidye has done it again. Following their under-appreciated season opener, Chekhov's Shorts, they're now offering a fresh interpretation of David French's Canadian "classic" Salt-Water Moon.

In its 17-year existence, this play has acquired a reputation for being sweet, even sentimental. But director Chris Abraham (known to Saidye audiences for his work with the Montreal Young Company) has stripped the play of cuteness and laid bare the pain and fear at its heart. It makes for a bracing evening of theatre

The material presents many a trap for actors and director to fall into. It is set in Newfoundland, in the 1920s, and is known to be French's re-creation of his parents' courtship. At the time that he wrote it he had already written about these characters later in life in Leaving Home and Of the Fields, Lately. As an audience it doesn't spoil our enjoyment of the plot to know that, even though Mary Snow begins the play engaged to Jerome MacKenzie, she will end up married to the irresistible Jacob Mercer. What could spoil our enjoyment is if the characters also knew that.

Actors Allan Hawco (Jacob) and Nicole Underhay (Mary) play the young couple not as portraits from another age but as living breathing people who don't know what is going to become of them, in the coming years or the coming minutes. And because of that, the two of them hold us spellbound for 90 minutes.

Two actors. One set. No gimmicks. It's a formula even seasoned actors can have a hard time pulling off, but thanks to Abraham's sure hand in the director's chair, Hawco and Underhay do it with grace.

The play takes place approximately in real time on the lawn of the house where Mary works as a maid. Jacob--with whom she had been keeping company until he took off to Toronto without a word a year ago--suddenly appears, determined to win her back. There's a nice long moment between her seeing him and the first word spoken: a moment packed with palpable emotion.

John Dinning's set is of the lovingly realist type that he does best. Luc Prairie's lighting is the next best thing to real moonlight.

This is a production that does justice to French's finely wrought text. The Saidye should line Abraham up now to direct another of the Mercer family plays next season.

A hellish evening

Gung-Ho productions presents two new one-acts by local writers starting tonight, Nov. 29, at Players Theatre. Tourist and Exile by noted pinko Anna Fuerstenberg is about a lifestyles columnist who somehow finds herself running for her life in a war-torn Central American country.

In Baroness Medea at the Gates of Hell, Cameron Groves has imagined a character who is a cross between the monstrous Medea of Greek myth and the beautiful but cold Baroness from The Sound of Music. I've gotta figure drugs were involved in that creative process... Anyway, the poor dear has to justify her life at the gates of hell to none other than the Marquis de Sade. Both plays are directed by Corey Castle and star Rebecca Singh and Brian Wrench. What more do you need to know? Go.

Salt-Water Moon, to Dec. 9 at the Saidye, $15-34, 739-7944. An Evening in Hell, Nov. 29-Dec. 1, Dec. 6-8, 8pm at McGill Players Theatre, $10-15, 845-6062