Playwright presents poetic love triangle
Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s addiction explored in her search for happily ever after
When a play about Elizabeth Barrett Browning has the title How do I Love Thee? you’d be right in guessing this Canadian Rep production is a romance.
It’s at the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs through Feb. 22.
But what kind of a romance? That’s the question inside the play by Florence Gibson MacDonald, directed by her longtime collaborator Ken Gass.
From a shotgun wedding of historical fact and Hollywood fiction ( The Barretts of Wimpole Street), we think we know that poet Elizabeth Barrett was a reclusive invalid with a domineering father who finally broke loose to marry fellow poet Robert Browning with a “happily ever after” ending.
But it was a desire to excavate the truth beneath the conventionally accepted wisdom that led MacDonald to go digging as she had in her previous plays, Belle and Home Is My Road.
“I wanted to look at the portrait of a marriage,” she said before a recent rehearsal, “the story of two people who really did love each other.
“But it was all a lot more complicated than anyone assumes. It wasn’t just her crazy daddy who caused them trouble. It was Elizabeth herself.
“She was a drug addict and Robert didn’t find out until after they were married.”
This is not just gossip but documented in a variety of letters and journals that didn’t come to light until well over100 years after her death.
Irene Poole, who plays Elizabeth, researched her character thoroughly
“She started being dosed when she was a teenager for a variety of reasons. She suffered from what they called hysteria in those days. She was a very highly functional addict and she eventually wrote all of her poetry under the influence. She came to think, in fact, that she needed it to write.”
Nora McLellan plays close family friend Elizabeth Wilson, inspired by an actual person, and she describes her role in the household as “to monitor Elizabeth’s dosage and keep her in a place where she had enough drugs to feel calm but still create. The classic enabler.”
Her male counterpart in this quartet of lies and repressed emotions is John Kenyon, played by David Schurmann. He self-deprecatingly describes his role as “a very minor poet who was a cousin of Elizabeth’s and a very good friend of Robert’s.”
He, too, knew what was happening behind closed doors and draped windows in the household, but held his peace because “the whole situation is complicated by the fact that he has feelings for Robert himself.”
That’s Browning, the man at the apex of the triangle between him and Elizabeth and her addiction.
Matthew Edison, himself an excellent playwright, plays Robert and is particularly impressed with what
“I wanted to look at the portrait of a marriage, the story of two people who really did love each other. But it was all a lot more complicated than anyone assumes.” FLORENCE GIBSON MACDONALD PLAYWRIGHT
MacDonald has done in her script.
“Florence has been really good about being respectful of every aspect of Robert’s character, and Robert and Elizabeth’s marriage.
“It becomes a very modern story about an addiction-governed relationship. “And no matter how much you love or admire someone, it’s so hard to come between them and their addiction.
“Yet, you’re also always aware these are real people with a valuable poetic legacy. There’s no trashing of reputations going on here.”
Poole says she can feel Elizabeth’s voice announcing, “This is who I am, the addiction is part of who I am and I love you through all of these, so love me as I am.”
The person who loves them all as they are is director Gass, who was smitten with the script as soon as MacDonald wrote it but allowed it to be done first in Calgary in 2010.
As McLellan puts it, “I can’t speak highly enough about Ken Gass and how fiercely he defends his playwrights and the passion he has for his piece.”
“Many plays get a first production, but it’s the second one that’s the problem,” says Gass. “I wanted to be able to give Florence that second . chance so few plays get.
“Her writing is so poetic, yet so true. It’s a complex portrait of two people who really love each other, but Elizabeth’s an addict and loves her addiction more. It simply breaks my heart.”