Duo of doom

…destroyed surely
Vagabond Productions
UPEI Performing Arts Centre, Charlottetown
March 12, 2025

Humans, take heed: UPEI theatre company Vagabond Productions brings you wisdom from the thrilling days of yesteryear, two Irish plays from the early 1900s that deliver a simple yet timeless message: We’re all doomed. 

I oversimplify, but only a smidgen. Vagabond’s evening of two one-act plays by Irish writer John Millington Synge—mercilessly bleak slice of seaside life Riders to the Sea (1904) and rural black comedy In the Shadow of the Glen (1903)—is staged under the collective title “…destroyed surely,” a phrase included in both plays, where a recurring theme of certain doom has various characters either predicting or lamenting an inevitable downfall. 

Inspired by the summers Synge spent in the Aran Islands, Riders to the Sea is set in a cottage on an island off the western coast of Ireland. Elderly matriarch Maurya (played here by Kyra Brewster) heads a family that is already mostly dead as the play begins, lost in various ways to the vast, pitiless ocean. With yet another son gone missing, Maurya repeatedly warns her remaining children Cathleen (Audrey Kyle Setia Gaboya), Nora (Reese Carmody) and Bartley (Spencer Knudsen) that death isn’t done with them yet, a sadly accurate prediction. 

As a tale of maritime life in a rural setting, it’s a play with resonance for PEI; but Synge paints it dark, depicting a family and a community resigned to a lifestyle of inescapable hardship, suffering and death. As Maurya concludes grimly, “What more can we want than that? No man at all can be living for ever, and we must be satisfied.” Yikes. 

The night’s second play handles a similar setting and themes with a lighter, livelier touch. This time the rural Irish cottage is in a shady glen, where acerbic housewife Nora Burke (played here by Madalyn Clempson) is holding a one-woman wake for her largely unlamented farmer husband Daniel (Brennan McDuffee), who may not be as dead as he seems. A tramp (Julian Knowles) seeking shelter joins the party, as does meek sheep herder Micheal Dara (Domonik Skomorowski), whom Nora seems to be auditioning as a potential replacement spouse. 

Again, there are PEI-compatible themes: rural life, farming, isolation.  “I got used to being lonesome,” says Nora, “…seeing nothing but the mists rolling down the bog… and hearing nothing but the wind crying out in the bits of broken trees were left from the great storm, and the streams roaring with the rain.” Synge’s characters, especially Nora and the cheerfully philosophical Tramp, have an occasional flair for the poetic that’s appealing, as is the streak of playfulness running through all except weary, workaday Dara. Characters get “destroyed” in some fashion again as the Burke household implodes, but there are notes of humour and hope here as opposed to the all-consuming gloom of Riders to the Sea. 

Brewster is genuinely moving in her quieter, more measured moments, but sometimes too unsubtly loud and gruff. Carmody’s projection and articulation fluctuate, perhaps due in part to a tendency to rush her lines; Gaboya’s more organic sense of timing and pacing helps give her excellent range and clarity; Knudsen is a believable, understatedly heartfelt Bartley; and Mohamad Ateeq, Sam Ching and Jane Cox offer able support as assorted villagers. 

Back in the glen, Clempson might be the night’s strongest all-around performer: clear, crisp enunciation, a natural sense of pacing, solid range and comedic chops. Natural, expressive, charming and a good verbal and physical comedian, Knowles is a fun and likeable presence. McDuffee is forceful and often funny but sometimes talks too fast, blurring his lines a bit. Skomorowski starts off too quiet but his projection improves, and the audience seems to enjoy his cartoonishly craven take on Dara. 

That said, the brightest star here is good old-fashioned stagecraft, Vagabond having sunk more time and money into production values than usual. Director/designer/producer Greg Doran, stage manager Oliver Chaffey, associate director Benton Hartley and their technicians and crew have built a proper three-walled cottage set, nicely dressed (and redressed somewhat for the second play), with period props and actors in period costumes and even a credible little fireplace. Along with solid light and sound, it looks and feels like an honest-to-gosh play you might see in one of PEI’s regional theatres, not just a class project. Plenty fancy for a Vagabond…