Review: Oyster Mill's FIRST BAPTIST OF IVY GAP is a Real (Church) Picnic

When one hears "play about a church, female cast," the usual thing that comes to mind is a comedy, or, since the Church Basement Ladies burst on the scene to make small town Midwestern Lutherans a source of hilarity to people other than small town Midwestern Lutherans (who have a finely developed sense of the absurd about themselves, vide PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION), even a musical. FIRST BAPTIST OF IVY GAP - which, like the CHURCH BASEMENT franchise has sequels - really isn't comedy as one might think of it, full of relentless humor throughout, but it's comedy as opposed to tragedy, as all's well that ends well; the drama is reconciled at the end with all being right with the world, or at least the women of First Baptist.

Ivy Gap, Tennessee, is one of those small towns that seem to be where people are from, not where they live. It's not much like Camp Hill, where Oyster Mill Playhouse is presenting the show, directed by Mike Stubbs. It begins during World War Two, when the local Red Cross has set the women's auxiliary of First Baptist to making and rolling bandages. Six women heed the call - pastor's wife Edith, played with aplomb by veteran Marcie Warner; church organist and would-be rabble-rouser Mae Ellen, who hopes to take a bus to Nashville and never return (a Southern theatrical veteran, Marie Joy Hunt); local widow with son in the Navy, Luby, played admirably by Aliza Bardfield; wealthy local matron Vera (Nancy Parson, clearly enjoying herself as perhaps the most amusing character in the show); Olene, who hopes to make it big on the silver screen (Emily Joyce, are you really only a high school junior with your maturity?); and Sammy (Creisson Soni), a girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and on the wrong side of Luby.

Playwright Ron Osborne doesn't go much for subtlety. It's clear that Luby dislikes Sammy for something to do with Luby's son. It's clear that Mae Ellen is a big talker about her music, but doesn't have nerve; it's equally clear that Olene has enough guts for both of them and then some, and that she'll make a move - and that the proposition she receives for a Hollywood screen test is as legitimate as an offer to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. Vera's bark is clearly worse than her bite, in spite of herself, and, oh, awful things will happen, with the war, with Olene, with Sammy, with Luby, and that the fiftieth anniversary party for the church is going to have some kind of issues.

The entire first act is a gathering storm of foreshadowing that can't be missed by anyone. It is up to the performers to make something of the obviousness, and the cast does just that. Bardfield's Luby plays close to her chest. Olene wants her chest to be noticed, and Joyce handles Olene's developing sexuality with finesse. Warner, as the pastor's wife, might as well be Ma from Little House in the Big Woods, steering the women away from collisions as well as she's able, though accidents do keep happening between the Red Cross volunteers.

Twenty-five years later, the Vietnam War is at its height, and First Baptist is having its seventy-fifth anniversary, still with Edith at the organizing helm. Mae Ellen is still the church organist, having never spread her wings to fly to Nashville - but she's become a full-fledged agitator. The other four have had... adventures... but the reunion has brought all of them back to Ivy Gap from Asheville on the one side to Las Vegas on the other. Sammy has built a life with a husband and children; can she and Luby co-exist? Can Luby, still in Ivy Gap, come to terms with her past twenty-five years? Olene can, she has, and that Joyce is still in high school is almost unbelievable as her character arrives as a smaller-scale but still successful Gypsy Rose Lee type. Even the awe-inspiring Vera has changed.

Joyce's performance is without a doubt the most surprising, as one doesn't expect maturity in a part like this from someone still in high school. Warner's is as fine as one might expect from her, playing the stalwart of the cast; she's always a natural as a powerhouse role. Bardsfield's performance is the most nuanced, and she's lovely in her turn from proud service mother to bitter elder. Soni, as Sammy, is a discovery, and her casting brings nuances to the role that another performer might not bring. Director Stubbs cast Congolese performer Soni in a part that is not specified as being either white or black, and the introduction of the racial question into the storyline with Soni's presence brings even deeper meaning to the storyline than Osborne may have intended. Soni is an interesting performer anyway, but this is a play in which her presence as an African performer is almost an additional characterization. And it works.

Through September 6 at Oyster Mill, and a real change from the run-of-the-mill church comedy. Humor's there, but this is a tale of intersecting lives crashing into each other, not of jolly holidays and church suppers. Osborne's obviousness as a storyteller doesn't give away how the resolutions come about, or that a happy ending is guaranteed, though there is one. The cast gives the story the needed dramatic tension that Osborne's writing lacks in itself.

Next up? NEXT TO NORMAL. With CAT'S MEOW, FIRST BAPTIST OF IVY GAP, and NEXT TO NORMAL, Oyster Mill shows what its space can do with the darker side of life as well as with farces. These are great show choices for its stage and its veterans.

Call 717-737-6768 or visit www.oystermill.com.

Photo credits: Chandra Yoder

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