Blessings

Blessings in Disguise

"undisguised delight"
Christopher Hoile, Stage Door

Written by Douglas Beattie, featuring Liza Balkan, Tom Beattie, Krista Jackson, Melissa Mae Lloyd, Stephen Russell, Bonnie McDougall, Michael Peng, Brian Tree and Patricia Yeatman in the cast. The production was directed by the playwright who also designed the set with costumes by Sarah Plater and lighting by Renée Brode. Robert Pel was the stage manager, assisted by Leslie Jost.

Blessings in Disguise ran for 9 performances, February 11 - 19, 2005

Premise
The story concerns the commissioning of a painting, or rather two paintings competing for the same spot, on a church wall in a small Pyrenean town. One commissioner is a wealthy widow, a devotee of Bernadette of Lourdes; the other, a stranger who dresses as a nun and may be a few prayer books short of a shelf. Caught between the two are an alcoholic café owner who used to be a promising painter and the parish priest...

From Touchmark's Press Release dated January 6, 2005:
Three of the actors who took part in Touchmark’s staged reading (of Blessings in Disguise)... will return to reprise their roles: Liza Balkan who was so delightful in Touchmark’s A Phoenix Too Frequent last season as the slave Doto will play the stranger, Marie; Stephen Russell, a senior member of the Stratford company and veteran of twenty-three seasons, will play Grégoire, the painter/café owner whom she undertakes to rehabilitate; and Patricia Yeatman who played a wonderful Amanda in Touchmark’s The Glass Menagerie will play Mme Vermillon, a wealthy widow. They’ll be joined by Krista Jackson as the beautiful courtesan, Sophie (Krista played Rita in Educating Rita at the River Run Centre in November), and Brian Tree, another much-admired favourite of Stratford audiences, will make his Touchmark debut as the parish priest Father Gustave.

There are also some very talented people lined up to play minor roles as townsfolk, servants etc: Michael Peng, a long-time ensemble member of Kitchener’s Theatre and Company; actress Bonnie McDougall who is also the Volunteer Coordinator at the River Run Centre; Melissa Mae Lloyd who made her professional debut in Touchmark’s The Playboy of the Western World in 2001 and is now a graduate of the Randolph School in Toronto; and Douglas Beattie’s fourteen-year-old son Tom Beattie, a seasoned actor in his own right with a couple of Stratford seasons under his belt as well as four years of Playmakers! Theatre School.

Renée Brode will return for her fifth lighting design assignment with Touchmark; Sarah Plater, wardrobe person for many Touchmark productions, will design the costumes.

Playwright
Douglas Beattie, Touchmark Theatre Founder and Producing Artistic Director, has been producing and directing plays professionally since 1979. He often works as an advisor on new plays; such various playwrights as Allana Harkin, Simon Joynes, Dan Needles and Eric Woolfe have benefitted from Mr. Beattie's help and suggestions.

He began writing Blessings in Disguise on a train trip home from a playwrights' workshop in Montreal in the early 1990's. "It started as an exercise; I'd been pontificating all weekend about how to approach playwriting -- I thought I should take my own advice and see if it actually worked."

Beattie's five or six previously written plays are unproduceable according to the author. "But they all served their purposes when I wrote them. There were two domestic comedies that I collaborated on in university, one for fun and one for credit; I adapted a Damon Runyon short story for teaching use at a summer day camp about the same time; I won a one-act play competition in 1967 (the theme was Confederation); and believe it or not, as an adolescent, I wrote two English chronicle plays which reflected my fascination with Shakespeare's history plays. My brother Rod (actor Rod Beattie) dubbed one of them The Awful Tragedie of King Harolde the Fair which pretty much sums it up."

Mr. Beattie hopes to write more plays in the future as soon as other business allows. "I've come a long way since King Harolde, and I think I've got a few more plays inside me yet."

Author's Note
I wanted to write a play that would appeal on different levels; first and foremost as a story and a good piece of fun with gentle satire and keen observation, but also as a look at the nature of vocation and creativity, the part they play in our lives and the ways in which we sometimes block the possibility of their fruition.

Blessings in Disguise was first produced by Manitoba Theatre Centre, Winnipeg, February 11, 1999.

Reviews
The cast of nine is an inspired mix of Stratford Festival veterans, Touchmark returnees and popular local actors... Blessings in Disguise is a soft-edged satire that meets at the crossroads of faith where creativity and religion meet. Although its themes are serious, Beattie's touch remains light.
Robert Reid, The Record & The Guelph Mercury
The work itself is a remarkable comedy filled with both laughter and ideas. It's Guelph's good fortune to see the author's view of his work in a first-rate production enacted by a flawless cast... During the play we are pre-occupied with Beattie's deftly-managed comedy of character and situation. The themes and their interconnections, however, resonate long afterwards...

It is wonderful to see Stratford stalwarts Brian Tree and Stephen Russell, too often consigned to secondary parts at that festival, shine in complex major roles. Tree makes full use of his witheringly dry delivery to wring full humour from Father Gustave's every line. He creates a portrait of a priest whose religious life has long since become more a series of annoying duties than one of joy or inspiration. Russell gives us a fascinating parallel portrait of the outcast artist Grégoire who has lost both inspiration for art and faith in himself. He carefully delineates the change in Grégoire from drunken despair and disbelief at the seemingly loony Sister Marie to the gradual recovery of a sense of worth.

Liza Balkan... is truly hilarious as Sister Marie. The relentless positivism she displays in face of the never fully effaced negativism of Gustave and Grégoire is always humourous with the joke on the disbelievers. Is this really the Virgin Mary, on vacation from Heaven, popping over from Lourdes between appearances to Bernadette, or is this just a very persuasive, no-nonsense nutcase whose Mary-complex has become second nature? Beattie and Balkan leave this point deliciously ambiguous.

Patricia Yeatman... returns to play the haughty Madame Vermillon, faddish both in religion and in art. Yeatman plays her as more than a caricature of the village tyrant and shows in Madame's reflection on her age that a sense of her mortality may be driving her obsessiveness. Parallel to Madame Vermillon is Grégoire's former lover and model, the prostitute Sophie who unlike Madame cares nothing for outward shows of morality. Like Sister Marie, she still believes in the good in Grégoire... Krista Jackson plays her with admirable simplicity.

Beattie has staged the play in runway format with the audience on either side of the playing area. The set representing the church, Beattie's own clever design, is at one end while an open area representing everywhere else is at the other. The frequent scene changes are so well choreographed, they are pleasures in themselves. Sarah Plater's fine period costumes establish distinctions between rich and poor, while Renée Brode's lighting is crucial in establishing location and mood from the sickly light of the drunken Grégoire's café to the radiance surrounding the play's final revelation.

Blessings in Disguise is a thoughtful, warm, humane comedy. The issues of faith, belief and art found here seem even more vitally relevant in 2005 than they were perhaps when the play was first performed. It's a rare delight that brings forth laughter as it tickles the brain.
Christopher Hoile, Stage Door
Really enjoyed the play the other night. It's a delightful piece that should have a long life. Great work from the cast, too!
David Prosser, Director of Literary Services, Stratford Festival
Thanks again for your wonderful offering of Blessings in Disguise... I didn't think there was a weak link in the cast, and the themes you developed, you did with sensitivity and great warmth/humour.
Alan K. Sapp, Kitchener
What a super show -- I just loved it!.. Sister Marie was so insufferably cute, and Brian Tree just makes me laugh all the time! And indeed the whole production was just fantastic.
Niki Kemeny, Guelph
Just wanted to drop you a note to tell you how much I enjoyed attending Blessings in Disguise... I don't have to tell you about the excellent job your actors did, or that the play itself is quite charming. I'm sure you have had that feedback many times over.
Joanne Grodzinski, Guelph