ENSEMBLE THEATRE
Tanja Dixon-warren and Alexis Kellum-creer tackle two of the imposing women in Ensemble Theatre Company’s repertory series
Formidable female roles are the link between the farflung, meaty dramatic works that make up this year’s Ensemble Theatre Company summer repertory festival.
In the rotation, Dark Road, a murder mystery cowritten by Ian Rankin, features Scotland’s first female chief constable, Isobel Mcarthur, investigating; and Martin Mcdonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane centres on the sparring of a strong-willed Irish mother and her equally stubborn daughter. Even A Few Good Men—despite its male-centric title—features a strong, principled female lawyer who goes up against a very masculine code of loyalty.
“I love this character in a world so dominated by men!” enthuses actor Alexis Kellum-creer, who plays naval lawyer and lieutenantcommander Joanne Galloway.
The character was inspired by screenwriter-playwright Aaron Sorkin’s own sister and her real experiences as an attorney. In the play, Galloway and a young lawyer named Lt. Daniel Kaffee have to defend two marines charged with the murder of a private who appears to have died during a hazing incident at Guantanamo Bay. Galloway (played by Demi Moore in the 1992 movie version) acts as Kaffee’s conscience, persuading him the two men might have acted on orders from higher up.
“She sticks to her convictions,” Kellum-creer says. “She’s the only one saying something is weird here, and she holds fast to that and digs deeper against this wall of masculinity. She doesn’t step down off a matter of principle.”
Kellum-creer says the play is as relevant as ever, with global fears about the rise of the military-industrial complex and the growing presence of women in the armed forces. “I didn’t realize until I did a bit of research that the first woman was enlisted in 1918, but as late as 1984, while women could serve as marines, they couldn’t be anywhere near combat. That wasn’t put into effect until 2016. So women have been serving for 100 years, but combat is not in the picture,” she says.
Kellum-creer adds that the new production will update the original 1980s-set version to a world where women are serving as marines. Codirected by Tariq Leslie and Alan Brodie, the latter better known as a lighting-design luminary in town, it will use light to create the different locations.
The Beauty Queen of Leenane, directed by Kathleen Duborg, has its
own rich female roles, exploring the poisonous codependency between mother Mag (Tanja Dixon-warren) and daughter Maureen (Kirsten Slenning). But unlike A Few Good Men’s Galloway, the matriarch of Mcdonagh’s toxically shut-in County Galway household is not exactly admirable or principled. In fact, she can be quite a nasty piece of work. No problem for Dixon-warren.
“It’s an absolute blast to chew up something like that,” she tells the Straight, before going through her lines with Slenning. “I come from a large family and I love stories about family. I have had a fantastic relationship with all my siblings and my mom, and, for me, this is a love story between a family—just a family that is completely dysfunctional.
“It’s also a story of survival for these two women and the codependency between them,” Dixon-warren
adds. “Only people who desperately love each other can hurt each other deliberately.”
Beauty Queen’s domineering Mag is 70 and spends most of her day in her rocking chair. Her 40-ish daughter has cared for her for at least two decades— and has only ever kissed two men. When a new man offers what may be Maureen’s last chance to escape the village of Leenane, a truly ugly power struggle ensues—sharpened with the same dark Mcdonagh wit that made his 2017 film Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri so bitterly enjoyable.
But Dixon-warren sees beauty in the script, too—and empathy for her miserable old Mag. “I love the rhythm and the cadence of the language—i love the Irish!” the actor says, and then turns to her difficult character. “She does do behaviours that are to me reprehensible. But then she can say something very sweetly.” With
elderly relatives in her life, and adult children, Dixon-warren has a window onto what Mag and Maureen are going through. “I’m quite moved by this dilemma between letting kids go and caring for elderly relatives. What is the burden on the family member who is providing the care?”
For Dixon-warren, it’s a matter of finding something to relate to in a female character that so contrasts herself.
The situation, as you might expect, is a little different for Kellum-creer, playing her naval attorney. “It’s fun every time you get to play someone with characteristics you wish you had,” she says.
Ensemble Theatre Company presents A Few Good Men from July 13 to August 17 and The Beauty Queen of Leenane from July 14 to August 15, both at the Jericho Arts Centre.