Maggie: Musical Melodrama

The company of Maggie sings "Everyone's Gone". (Photo: Diane Sobolewski)

The Canadian musical Maggie, which was birthed at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton, Ontario and is currently running at the Goodspeed Opera House, is set in Lanark, Scotland between 1954 and 1976. The family whose saga inspired it is that of Johnny Reid, who co-wrote the music with Bob Foster (he also supervised and orchestrated it) and the book and lyrics with Matt Murray. The title character, played by Christine Dwyer, who has to raise three sons by herself after her miner husband (Anthony Festa) dies in a pit accident, is based on Reid’s grandmother. Maggie is a feminist narrative that celebrates the strength of its heroine and places her in the center of a group of other hard-working women, miners’ wives who provide emotional support for each other that their stoic, closed-off men don’t. (Ironically, the exception seems to be Maggie’s husband.)

Given its aura of authenticity, one comes to the show with high hopes, and the spirited cast sings the fourteen songs with heartfelt enthusiasm. But I’m afraid it just isn’t very good. There’s a lot going on in the plot. Economic hardship and particularly a shortage of jobs have been driving native Scots to London and Canada, and every time a Catholic takes a position that might have gone to a Protestant, the hire reinforces the old tensions between the two communities. One of Maggie’s sons, Shug (Jeffrey Kringer), who hoped to become a musician but has followed in his father’s footsteps into the pit, becomes involved with a group of local miners protesting the employment of Catholics. But it’s his brother Tommy (Wes Williams), who has his eye on a professional football career, who winds up in prison when he steps in to defend Shug in a brawl and accidentally kills his assailant. Shug detects his mother’s anger that it was Tommy and not he who wound up running afoul of the law; he senses that she resents him for Tommy’s fate. The youngest son, known as Wee Jimmy (Sam Primack), born after his father’s death, garners an engineering degree but falls in love with a Catholic girl, Teresa (Sonya Venugopal) – a development that the musical introduces and then drops just as quickly, though Maggie’s own marriage to her Jimmy also crossed religious lines. Maggie’s beloved brother-in-law, Charles (Ryan Duncan), is unabashedly gay and finally emigrates to London, where his lifestyle doesn’t make him a target of intolerance. In fact, the only character on stage who seems to have a problem with him is the musical’s all-purpose villain, Tam (Matt Faucher), who also heads up the rabble-rousers and beats his wife (Kennedy Caughell).

I have no doubt that all of these details are historically accurate, but the show reduces them to a pile of soap-opera clichés. Most scenes in Maggie follow the same pattern: a smattering of melodrama builds to a ballad with trite lyrics delivered by one or two of the characters planted downstage. The director, Mary Francis Moore, has been with the project since its inception, but she has done almost no actual staging, so these songs stop the show cold. When she wants to create some movement to suggest the passage of time, she has the ensemble march back and forth across the stage in parallel straight lines. And though I enjoyed the first few ballads, after a while they all start to sound the same. Occasionally the choreographer, EJ Boyle, steps in for an upbeat number like “Livin’ It Up” (when finally, in 1974, the local pub opens its doors to women) or “Queen for a Day,” but the rest of the time there isn’t much action, and though Beowulf Boritt’s emblematic unit set is striking at first, after a while you feel the need for something else to look at.

Dwyer is heard in nine of the fourteen songs, including four solos, and she conveys Maggie’s toughness and warmth. She’s a strong enough performer to carry the show. Kringer and Williams both create three-dimensional characters and their duet “Gettin’ Outta Here” is one of the musical’s two highlights; the other is the ensemble number “Everyone’s Gone.” Primack isn’t memorable as Wee Jimmy, but the script gives him very little to work with. The trio of miner’s wives (Sophia Clarke, Terra C. MacLeod and Caughell) provide an ongoing cheering element. But the material is paltry and doesn’t develop its ideas.

– Steve Vineberg is Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he teaches theatre and film. He also writes for The Threepenny Review and is the author of three books: Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style; No Surprises, Please: Movies in the Reagan Decade; and High Comedy in American Movies.