The Left Atrium

The play has a somewhat edifying Extreme nursing tone and portrays Newfoundland culture Tempting Providence in a warm light. It delivers a certain po- A play by Robert Chafe etry, but matter-of-factly, as befits the Directed by Jillian Keiley heroine at its core. The narrative seems Original lighting design by Walter J. Snow to assume that the obvious facts of isola- Costume design by Barry Buckle tion and hardship are the only points on A Theatre Newfoundland Labrador Production which the audience needs to be illumi- National Arts Centre Studio, July 15–31, 2004 nated, or won over. Myra herself be- comes impatient with this theme: “You s the story goes, Daniel’s Harbour public health — observing (and publish- all have this big talk about winter. Like Awas a lucky find. A natural cove on ing a paper about) an association be- it’s a terror.” (Still, the audience is right the western shore of Newfoundland’s tween a high incidence of breech births to chuckle, along with Angus, at her Great Northern Peninsula, it gave life- and the physical habits of the local naïveté.) The isolation is another matter. saving refuge to one Daniel Riggins (or women, who stooped arduously over Myra finds herself in the classic position Regan) and his family on a stormy day in their vegetable plots even when they of the overworked woman: in constant 1821 when they were travelling from were near to term. demand, but nonetheless suffering from Labrador to Bonne Bay. Another kind of Robert Chafe’s Tempting Providence loneliness. “There is an absence here,” providence took 31-year-old Myra is a straight-up piece of dramatic story- she muses in moments of homesickness Grimsley, of London, England, to telling that honours the redoubtable and doubt. One wants to learn a little Daniel’s Harbour exactly 100 years later. legacy of Myra Bennett. With a cast of more about the absence in her heart, After ten years in practice as a nurse in two men and two women, a set consist- Britain — a more comfortable setting, ing of four wooden chairs, a table and but one emotionally shattered by the length of white cloth, the production Great War — she’d been persuaded by was commissioned by Theatre New- the wife of the Governor of Newfound- foundland Labrador (TNL) as portable land to bring her skills to a place in dire fare for senior citizens’ homes, schools need of nurses. She accepted a 2-year and parish halls. Deidre Gillard-Rowl- contract at $900 a year in Daniel’s Har- ings plays a stern and decisive Nurse bour, an isolated community connected Bennett whose ramrod posture and to the world (weather depending) by clipped delivery modulates into passion dogsled, horse and coastal steamer. The only when duty transports her. Angus, nearest hospital was the Grenfell Mis- played by Darryl Hopkins, is possessed sion, hundreds of miles away. The need of a self-deprecating irony no less res- was plain, her duty clear. Nurse Grims- olute in its way. Making up his mind at ley became dentist, bonesetter, midwife first meeting to marry her, Angus is the and guardian of public health. Within a only one who would dare accuse Myra National Arts Centre Deidre Gillard-Rowlings and Darryl year she also became the wife of Angus of having a “depth that would make the Hopkins in Tempting Providence Bennett, a local ex-merchant marine; very Atlantic blush with shame.” In- and so it was that two years spun into deed, much of the depth we sense in nearly seventy. She died in her adopted Myra we see through Angus’ devoted about why she needs to challenge herself home, a centenarian. eyes. The vigorous performances of to “have the courage to feel something.” Before her official retirement in Melanie Caines as “Woman” and What is the prior, maidenly history of 1953, Myra Bennett had delivered hun- Robert Wyatt Thorne as “Man” pro- this dutiful adventuress? dreds of babies and extracted thousands vide the chorus and supporting roles, Professional theatre, like tourism, is of teeth. Her most storied achievement conveying the candid voices of a stal- one of the new industries of Newfound- was to reattach her brother-in-law’s wart community — the neighbours, land After the Cod; TNL runs a popu- nearly-severed foot after he fell on the wise women, gossips and salts who lar summer repertory theatre at Gros blade of a lumber saw. This “Florence made up Nurse Bennett’s clientele Morne and operates a year-round pro- Nightingale of the North” also prac- along hundreds of miles of underpopu- fessional company from Corner Brook

tised the rational empiricism needed in lated coastline. (where all of the cast and some of the DOI:10.1503/cmaj.1041612

CMAJ • OCT. 26, 2004; 171 (9) 1079

crew trained in the theatre program at Ireland and England. This fall’s itiner- cisim, doubt or more than the gentlest Sir Wilfred Grenfell College). Tempting ary (available at www.theatrenewfound irony, don’t seek it here. Humour there Providence made its debut at the Gros land.com) includes intensive tours in is, but of a quiet kind, as in the following Morne Theatre Festival in 2002 to sell- Saskatchewan, Ontario and Atlantic exchange (which ceilidh-goers on either out crowds and was reprised the next Canada. side of the Atlantic will appreciate): season. Since then, the play has toured During the play’s UK tour, some to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa critics more urbane than the present one MYRA: You people, it’s amazing. This perfectly nice house, with in July 2004, to the prestigious Traverse found Tempting Providence a little tame a perfectly nice parlour, Theatre venue at the Edinburgh Festi- — too episodic, too straightforward, in- couches, chairs, and you all val Fringe, and to multiple venues in sufficiently complex. If you want cyn- insist upon squeezing into a kitchen the size of a closet. ANGUS: It’s a proper dance my dear. Can’t stray from the kitchen. My twins The script is certainly episodic: an energetic, chronological run through I was looking after twins, twins with bronchiolitis. life events, trials and accomplishments, At morning signover, whoever had been on call would tell me how ending with a recitation of Nurse Ben- much trouble the twins, those terrible twins, had been overnight. During nett’s various life honours and awards. morning rounds, I’d joke that I had only bothered to do one physical That being said, the flow from scene to exam for the both of them. I tried, succeeding on some days and failing scene is tightly choreographed and fas- on others, to find some time to take with their exhausted mother, who cinating to watch as the white-clad ac- was being worn away by the demands of her babies who were sick and tors-cum-stagehands swiftly transform the other kids at home who weren’t. I struggled to remember which boy the scene. The white cloth is transmog- was which, eventually keeping it straight by thinking of them as “the one rified from bedsheet to wedding dress by the window” and “the one by the door.” Consequently, I lived in ter- and swaddled baby; the chairs and tables ror that the nurses might, for some inscrutable purpose, switch the boys’ are sickbed, sawtable, cradle, sled. The positions. That never happened, but they did get moved to another room, economical and ingenious uses of these and I had to adapt quickly to calling them “the one on the left” and “the props is itself a metaphor for the inven- one on the right.” When on call at night, I’d check on the twins, those tiveness of necessity — the self-reliance worrisome twins, and listen to the frightful difficulty of their breathing. of outport life and of those nurses in re- Once or twice their nurse found me there in the middle of the night, and mote communities who must also play joined me in my fretting. the role of surgeon and doctor. There was something weird about those boys. On admission, each was In such places, community itself is struggling to breathe, too tired to eat, and suffering from an ugly diaper rash. necessity’s child. If there is a central, They were in the same shape, more or less. Then one of the boys improved, providential revelation in Myra’s life as his breathing becoming less harrowing. But his brother worsened. Then he dramatized by this play, it is that the ab- started to get better as well, but only after we got a report of a positive blood sence she grapples with is illusory. After culture from a sample taken before admission. We decided it was probably the ordeal of the heroic surgical repair, a contaminated culture and nothing to worry about, but then the other one’s knowing full well the dangers of infec- rash got worse. One change of antifungals later, the rash was improving, but tion and rejection and the virtually im- the boy got a fever. We x-rayed him and found a pneumonia. possible distance to medical and surgical As I wrote the order to start antibiotics, I was wondering what was going care, Myra’s desperation reaches an an- on. There seemed to be, between the two boys, a fixed and limited amount guished and almost incoherent pitch. of health that was being traded back and forth. Was there only one life be- And then she sees, materializing in the tween the two of them, only half a life each? Would one eventually snatch distance, figures approaching — folk all of that life away from the other? from along the coast, alerted by radio Before I had much chance to think about this, to get into a philosophical and coming to help. At this moment the frenzy about it, the twins, my helpless twins, started to get better. They audience sees what Myra sees — no went home with their mother, and I went on looking after other patients. longer a bleak and empty landscape but a community that wills itself into being, Paul Moorehead transcending distances and sustaining Pediatrics Resident anyone who finds the courage to belong. Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John’s, Nfld. Anne Marie Todkill

DOI:10.1503/cmaj.1031038 CMAJ

1080 JAMC • 26 OCT. 2004; 171 (9)