Morality Play World Premiere at the Gamm

There’s a sometimes-contradictory thing that happens with history, which is that we are forever changed by it but are sometimes blind to its consequences, so much so that it keeps us drowning in a swirling sink-hole of déjà vu. If I sound a little angsty, it’s because I am; as I’m writing this, the country’s climate – and the world’s – is not particularly a happy one. The same things keep happening. We try and we fail to sort them out, to name them and to move on a wiser people. Etc. etc. ad nauseum.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons that Morality Play, the world premiere adaptation by Tony Estrella opening the new year at The Gamm this month, feels like a particularly prescient choice. Although Tony says he began working on the piece just over 15 years ago – he encountered the primary source, the novel by Barry Unsworth, while working in a Borders in Cranston during college – the events and the texture of the play seem to ring true to today’s hot-button issues. So while The Gamm may be presenting this work “for the first time ever,” we might get that familiar itch at the back of our brains. Have we seen this before? Have we lived through it and come out the other side, only to dump ourselves back in again?

The year is 1361, and winter in England provides a bleak backdrop for the intriguing tale. While the Black Plague rages on in a world structured and arbitrated by the Church, a group of actors travel to spread the typical biblical stories across the land. But the subject of the stories changes when, in what Tony describes as a “Promethean” moment both for the characters and for the history of theater – in itself a powerful tool in the quest to uncover truth and pursue reconciliation, to borrow terms from another fiery period in the crucible of history – the actors come across a bit of a murder mystery, and take it upon themselves to tell the story in the hopes of uncovering the truth. As if this weren’t poetic enough to resonate with our times, the story is one of high stakes: the sole suspect, set to be hanged, is a mute girl who literally cannot speak for herself.

For Tony, who will be among The Gamm’s group of actors breathing life into this story-within-a-story, the meta-theatricality was one of the primary attractions that drove him to adapt and refine the play over the years until it had found its shape, and a home. “The actors [decide] that we have to tell our own stories or we won’t survive. That’s a watershed moment. That’s one of the reasons I make theater; so it has become very personal to me,” Tony says.

Both Tony and Tyler Dobrowsky, who will direct the world premiere production, say that the piece will be a passionate representation of what’s great about theater as a storytelling art – the power to give voice to the voiceless, to inspire empathy and understanding. This is, in part, why the gestation period was so long, according to Tony – he had to work to change his adaptation from a novelistic form to a theatrical one. “It’s very theatrical,” he says, noting that from the moment the audience enters the theater, the actors will already be on stage.

Tyler clarifies that the play isn’t about audience participation, but rather immersion: “It’s an exciting theatrical event. We’ve redesigned the space, and when people show up, it will be a whole new world. The audience will be invested and involved in the show. And the play is so huge, in a lot of ways – it has a cast of 16, and it deals with these massive themes – I wanted to honor the size of all of those things by making it more of an event.”

If Tony’s recent history with adaptations is any indication, Morality Play will likely not disappoint (it was his critically acclaimed adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that we just saw closing out 2014 at The Gamm). But while Gabler was conceived and written for the stage, Unsworth’s work wasn’t, and some of the challenges in the process came from “being brave,” he says, pushing past the striking (and signature) narrative voice that drives Unsworth’s story and letting the action speak for itself. What we’re left with, Tony promises, is a “thrilling whodunit,” full of action and drama. “It’s really an exciting, shocking, surprising play,” he says.

Morality Play
Adapted for the stage by Tony Estrella from the novel by Barry Unsworth
January 1-February 1
The Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre
172 Exchange Street
Pawtucket
723-4266