Mythic Feminism

The world premiere presentation of A Monster Has Stolen the Sun is an ambitious and noteworthy production. Despite the fact that the play is set in the sixth century, Angus the carver's line, "It's a visual age...splendid effects turn the heads of the crowds," certainly rings true for the play today. The moving stage props, realistic backdrop, and effective lighting contribute significantly to the success of this feminist production on the Loeb Mainstage.

Monster appropriately opens with the the company's choreographed performance of what appears to be a Celtic birth ritual. This is a play mainly about birth, death and the symbolism surrounding them in sixth century Celtic culture. The vocabulary through which the complex themes of the play surface is often mytho-poetic.

Accompanying the imaginative text is the score by Jeff Tennessen, which succeeds admirably in conveying and supporting the moods of given scenes. Tennessen's vocal numbers are considerably less effective, and the motivation for song is not always clear. But Alison Weller playing Macha, the play's protagonist, does a fine job with her several songs.

Playwright Karen Malpede intended the work to be a celebration of womanhood and woman's fertility. At a crucial and trying moment early in the play Macha states, "Bind me to life." Both she and her daughter Etain (Courtney Williams) see themselves as bound to life, and the phrase as their emblem.

The celebration of life is an embrace of both the good and the bad, and this is the point that the men of the play do not grasp. Their fear of death--and birth--leads them to destroy the things they "love" in an attempt to gain control over their inevitably finite existence.

But even death is not to be feared, the female characters would have you believe, because it too is part of the life cycle. Etain asks, while standing over the bones of the deceased woman whose name she bears, "What have I to fear if this is what you have become?" Death is a return to mother earth, and both Etain and Macha glorify the mother. Macha celebrates the regenerative process of birth when she says, "There is no love like the love I bear for Etain." She and her daughter, the only truly successful female characters, are exemplars of binding to love and life, and they view that binding as the quintessence of their womanhood.

In her portrayal this ennobled idea of womanhood and woman-strength, Malpede is effective. But the script is not without its problems. As much as the text glorifies the feminine it is a polemic against the masculine. The male characters are an array of negative masculinity stereotypes.

Macha's husband, Ian, the shepherd (Stephen Frick) is a caricature of a fool. Though he is appreciative of womanhood and respectful of his wife, his weaknesses and stupidity are the cause of her wrestling--while pregnant--with Lord Owain. We sympathize with Macha when she asks, "Are all those who practice a gentle touch weak in the brain?"

Angus (Richard Nash) is a perverted and deceitful old man who has raped his daughter for most of her life and justified himself by calling it "love." Lord Owain is a macho, sadistic representative of patriarchal society, who not only forces Macha to wrestle him, but wrestles while his wife--to whom he has been unfaithful--dies in child birth.

His child, Conor (played by Brad West at age 12 and Arthur Wu at 16), survives and serves as the sole decent representative for the more barbaric sex. But his goodness seems to come from his mother and the influence of a chance meeting with the young Etain (Sian Heder), who is the namesake of Conor's mother. The extent to which the more developed Conor can be viewed positively is the extent to which he takes on more feminine characteristics.

The final male character is Vincent, a monk (Tom Hughes), who is also presented negatively. Though he is earnest and genuine, he represents a less natural, less sexual way of life. While he does not sexually exploit women as the two most evil male characters do, this is due to his priestly duties and possibly to his homosexuality. As a representative of Christianity, he influences, through religion, the two women in the work who most fail to live to the potential of their own womanhood. The first, the elder Etain (Patty Goldman), Conor's mother, dies in child birth seemingly because she is afraid of it. The other, Elen (Jennifer Harris), Angus' molested daughter, turns from her incestuousness to chastity.

Until the very end of the play, the men of Monster are devoid of the humanity, which the women like Macha and her child Etain embody. The final resolution, where Lord Owain comes to lay down his weapons and his machismo, is problematic. His character has not been properly prepared for the metamorphosis. His chastity after his wife's death and his late embrace of a more empathetic way of life cannot be convincing, because, throughout the work, his character has been flat and static. Even if we did believe the change, we would know it was not entirely autonomously made--Owain labors under a disabling curse made by Macha.

The entire final resolution is forced. Macha seems overly willing to forgive Owain's sins and to welcome him into her world. Her gesture can perhaps be viewed as her ultimate strength, but it does not seem particularly realistic.

Though Malpede's male characters are personifications of the worst of masculine qualities, her goal is not a celebration of the ways of men. She has the noble aim of showing the strength of women and celebrating life and birth. Her aim is realized. The cast and the production of Monster are generally strong, and the text rich. But above all, the thematic content is rewarding.