There must be more interesting plays to be written about Oliver Cromwell’s depredations in Ireland than Helen Edmundson’s The Clearing, an old-fashioned exercise in costume agitprop that was first performed in London in 1993. Yet the Wellesley Summer Theatre has chosen to interrupt the play’s progress toward oblivion by mounting this doggedly efficient production.
In 1652, when the play opens, Cromwell has reconquered Ireland, and his administrators are planning drastic measures for the native population. Thousands will be executed, thousands more shipped to the West Indies, and the rest forced to " transplant " to the wilds of Connaught. The Clearing studies the effects of these policies on Robert Preston, an English landowner in Ireland, and Madeleine, his Irish wife. The Prestons hope that Robert’s record of service to Cromwell will keep them from harm. But when her childhood friend Killaine is arrested, Madeleine complains to the English governor — a bit of brashness that endangers her, compromises Robert, and leads to the couple’s being driven apart. The playwright’s scope widens briefly to account for three other victims: the Prestons’ neighbors, the Winters; and Pierce, another of Madeleine’s childhood friends, who has been radicalized by persecution and hates the British.
In her characterizations and plotting, Edmundson sticks to well-trodden paths. Her characters come in various shades of dull, and they all talk in the same stilted way, a patois that negotiates an uneasy truce between " Irish " lyricism and comfy BBC-drama exposition. " My every other thought is a wanting for him, " Robert says of his newborn infant. Later, he observes, " There’s a new mood growing in the town. It’s darker than war and more calculated. " As for Pierce, though the other characters talk about him as if he were a sexual and political firebrand more formidable than Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, his rare incursions on stage bring only purple speechifying. Every turn of the plot is predictable.
Directed by Nora Hussey, the Wellesley production makes a polite case for the play. The set is serviceable and the lighting fluid. Various projections on the back wall of the stage — a full moon; the shadows of trees, buildings, and a ship’s tackle — mark scene changes with economy while conveying a troubled mood. The absence of props is neither a handicap nor a particular benefit — except in a magic moment when Robert mimes lighting a lamp and the set rewards the actor’s artistry by brightening (unfortunately the effect is repeated).
Hussey’s staging is straightforward. The early scenes set forth issues and accumulate forebodings — a dreary business the director is in no hurry to get through. The pace picks up briefly in the action surrounding Killaine’s arrest, only to settle again in the consoling tedium of what follows. One way to make the play’s portentousness interesting would be to exaggerate it, to attempt a Carl Dreyer–like excess of stylization, but Hussey prefers a simple naturalism that only underlines Edmundson’s pat approach. To be sure, the final scene — which justifies the play’s title — is a wintry triumph that almost vindicates so much plodding by author and director. But it’s late in coming.
Derek Stone Nelson’s studied manner suits the circumspect Robert, and Alicia Kahn, as Madeleine, declines the author’s invitation to scenery chewing, instead working with a sullen, smothered naturalness. Both actors manage to compensate for the clichés of their roles. Saddled with those virtuous, blockish worrywarts the Winters, Bern Budd and Jennifer Jones Barton have still harder tasks that they deal with very well. Stephen Cooper brings restrained intensity to the part of the vengeful governor. These performances go some way toward making The Clearing reasonably convincing — and that’s as far as one can go with it.
