Belle Moral

NAC presents Ann-Marie MacDonald’s latest play

Byrne: "One of the themes of this play is exploring the meaning of 'family'"

It’s rare for an author to have great success in disparate fields, but lauded Canadian novelist Ann-Marie MacDonald is also extremely well known for her dramatic writing. Her latest work, Belle Moral: A Natural History, concluded an extremely successful run at the Shaw Festival, only to pick up wholly and relocate to the NAC Studio theatre for a few weeks.

Fiona Byrne, a lead actress in the production, described the process: “It’s a different energy. We can still be alive in the play, but have to adjust to fit the new surroundings.”

She talks excitedly about the new settings, and the challenges involved in remounting a whole production with only two days of rehearsals. “It’s a wonderful injection to something that’s so polished. The change makes you reinvestigate all of what you’ve created already, to go deeper into the character and conflicts.”

On stage, she has a shock of coppery hair and a willowy, commanding presence. But what really limns the performance is her relation to the other cast members, the comfort and practiced way they have with each other. The production was fortunate enough to be able to tour the entire cast of the original Shaw production.

“One of the themes of this play is exploring the meaning of ‘family,’ and the Shaw Festival itself relies heavily on the idea of an ensemble. There’s a massive amount of trust with an ensemble. When you fully trust your partners on stage you can go deeper into the material and explore more.”

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – Feb. 05, 2009
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=16573