Dramatic tour de force in the city for a week
City performer Arielle Rombough shines in subversive The Good Bride
Last year, Vancouver playwright Rosemary Rowe’s subversive little comedy The Good Bride took Edmonton by storm.
It’s the story of Maranatha, a 15-year-old girl who puts on her wedding gown every night and stands beside her packed bags praying and waiting for her 25-year-old groom to claim her.
The Good Bride snagged a Sterling Award for outstanding new play for Rowe and an acting nomination for Calgary actress Arielle Rombough.
Handsome Alice’s artistic director Kate Newby was adamant Calgary audiences should have the opportunity to see The Good Bride and revel in Rombough’s tour de force performance.
Newby contacted Northern Lights artistic director Trevor Schmidt and asked him to remount his production.
Schmidt agreed, but the only window he had available was Sep- tember, so The Good Bride is taking up home in the Arts Commons Motel Theatre through Oct. 2.
“Maranatha is a member of the Quiverfull Christian faith. It is a hyper fundamentalist Christian sect that the reality TV family the Duggars adhere to,” explains Rombough.
“To them, gender roles are extremely important. A man is always the headship and the headship must be obeyed without question. The head of their religion is God, then Jesus, then the pastor and then a family’s father. In Maranatha’s case, her father is the pastor so that direct link to God is all that much stronger. Maranatha’s father is waiting for a sign from God as to when her groom can come and claim her.”
While the girl waits she is billeted with another family so she can learn what it means to be a good woman and good bride.
Rombough says Rowe has done incredible research to show how this old-fashioned religion can ex- ist in modern times and the toll it takes on its followers — especially the women, because their role is essentially to provide their husbands with as many children as they are able.
Though she is adamant she and Maranatha are polar opposites, Rombough says getting inside Maranatha’s mindset helped her connect with her own life at age 15.
“That was a very big and important year for me, too,” she says.
“I learned suddenly, quickly and rapidly about how the world works and how dark the world can be. Very early on I started to challenge the precepts Maranatha is having ingrained into her but the same kind of narratives were sold to me at school and by society. I can understand how someone as vulnerable as Maranatha could become indoctrinated and I can also understand why she begins to question things she is supposed to take solely on faith.”
Calgary audiences got introduced to Rowe through her the world premiere of her history play Camp Victoria, at Lunchbox Theatre in 2014.
“Camp Victoria is very much a woman’s voice but that voice gets so much stronger in The Good Bride,” says Rombough who must hold the stage for 90 minutes without an intermission.
The Good Bride runs in the Motel Theatre until Oct. 2. Performances are nightly at 7:30 p.m., with 2:30 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets begin at $20 and are available online at handsomealice.com or by calling 403-294-9494.