Diana Leblanc & David Fox
The Road to Mecca, written by Athol Fugard, is a three person play that examines the life of an eccentric old woman, Miss Helen (Diana Leblanc) and her desire to remain in her home making her art even though the community around her feels that she is a bit crazy and is growing increasing uncomfortable with her ever expanding creations of Biblical characters, animals, and colored glass crowding her lawn and home.
Miss Helen has become an outcast and a recluse but is befriended by the independent, fiery schoolteacher Elsa (Shannon Taylor). She is also close to Reverend Byleveld (David Fox) who believes he has the old woman’s best interests in mind when he arranges for her to move into an old age home. The play takes place in rural South Africa in the Karoo region during the 1970’s during the height of apartheid. Racial tension is not really the focus of the play but the weight of it is still present in this piece. The play is based on a real woman, Helen Martins, and her home known as The Owl House, which has been preserved and is now a heritage site. It didn’t end well for the real woman who started to go blind from all the glass particles in her home (she used coloured glass in her art) and she ultimately ended up killing herself by swallowing caustic soda.
Beth Kates created an impressive set (she also did the lighting design), which was clearly inspired by photographs of The Owl House. There are several large-scale sculptures of humans that adorn both the outside and inside space. A few take dramatic dancer poses while others look like trapped bodies in the ruins of Pompeii. There is a giant owl with its magnificent wings outstretched that rests at the top of the house overlooking the action. In the second act, several candles are lit and one of the walls becomes a coppery illumination. It is quite a striking image.
I had problems with the script itself. The real life story seems more interesting than what Fugard chose to explore. The play looks at a battle of wills between three people, an old lady who seems to be at a cross roads, a young woman who wants the older woman to stand her ground and an elderly man who wants to keep her safe by getting her into an old age home. There is a great deal of tension between all three but I never really understood the relationships to invest in any of them.
The first half of the play was almost entirely between the two women and unfortunately it was flat. The second half was stronger when Fox entered and infused some life into the works.
The problem for me in the first half was Leblanc and Taylor kept missing each other. They weren’t allowing the lines to land on one another. Taylor rushed much of her dialogue and didn’t allow Leblanc to register anything before she charged on with the next idea. Her delivery came off very one note with missed beats and emphasis. Leblanc played Helen too meek and subdued. Suddenly the two would have a heightened conflict that seemed to come out of nowhere because the framework hadn’t been properly established.
Director David Storch did his actors a disservice with some of his blocking choices that did not read naturalistically. There was a lot of business with Elsa taking her clothes off, putting a robe on, taking the robe off, putting on other clothes (including a sweater even though she had mentioned being out in the heat for hours in a car), putting shoes on, taking shoes off, putting them on again. Perhaps he was trying to avoid two talking heads on stage, which is largely what happened in the first act anyway, but for me, the stage business wasn’t organic and the first act in general seemed inauthentic.
The second half was stronger and it seemed like everyone dropped in to their characters a bit more but there was still a fair amount of forced emotion and ultimately they did not win me back from an unsteady first half. Fox did some nice work and seemed to be a grounding force to the female characters. Once he was on stage, there seemed to be more balance in everyone’s delivery.
The Road to Mecca left me wanting more. I thought Fugard’s ending was cheap and predictable. He left the audience with a feeling of hope for Miss Helen when in reality, that isn’t what happened and that story for me is the more interesting of the two.
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