Having a senior moment Caryl Churchill play a rare opportunity for four women over 70 to command the stage By: Ben Waldman Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Oct. 17, 2022 Last Modified: 9:22 PM CDT Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/10/2022 (800 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the real world, it’s not at all noteworthy for a group of women like Patricia Hunter, Jane Burpee, Megan McArton and Maggie Nagle to get together for a cup of coffee and chat.

In the world of theatre, it’s practically unheard of.

That’s because each of the four actors is over the age of 70, which, for some reason, seems to be a point of no return for performers seeking to be cast as anything other than a wizened granny or the little old lady down the street who provides timely comic relief. To have one substantive role for a woman who was born before 1960 is uncommon enough. But four, in one production?

Let’s put it this way: in Willy Wonka, the grandmas stay in bed while Grandpa Joe has the best day of his life.

So three years ago when Hunter caught wind of Escaped Alone, a funny, apocalyptic play by the British writer Caryl Churchill featuring four “old women” sitting in the yard as they unravel their personal histories in dialogue and in asides to the audience, she knew she had to get her hands on a script.

“Who writes a play for women in their 70s? Nobody does,” Hunter says during a break from a run-through in the Colin Jackson Theatre inside Praire Theatre Exchange.

A good play!” interjects Nagle.

“Often,” Hunter continues, “at this age we’re the token grandmother or something. We’re just on the periphery of anything. We’re not holding the stage as characters. This is four women with opinions sharing the stage, and it’s just so powerful at this age to just exist and talk about things people don’t think little old ladies talk about.

“We do talk about soap operas,” she adds. “But we also have a life.”

Escaped Alone, which received a five-star review from The Guardian upon its debut in 2016, makes the most of its casting conceit, allowing its quartet of stars to prowl the stage as much more than a narrative crutch.

With intricate, interweaving conversation, every word, glance, or motion carries meaning, forcing the viewer to follow along as Churchill’s serpentine script, directed by Krista Jackson, defies narrative and aural convention.

The four women, along with Jackson, assistant director Emma Welham and stage manager Margaret Brook, are on their 13th day of rehearsals, but Escaped Alone — which runs Wednesday to Sunday — has been in the works for more than two years.

When the creative process began, one more woman was involved, with plans to star as Mrs. Jarrett, the outsider who serves as a catalyst for much of the action.

Nancy Drake loved the role. She found out about it from Nagle, who initially furrowed her brow at the script and couldn’t see herself in the character of Mrs. J. On the second read, Nagle decided to pitch it to Drake.“I thought how fabulous it would be to see Nancy in the part.”

Drake, though not necessarily a household name, had for decades been a titan and central figure in the Manitoba theatre world.

Beginning in 1976, she performed in 28 plays with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, eight with Prairie Theatre Exchange and 23 musicals, with more than 20 credits in film and television. All the while, she raised four children as a single mother, and taught theatre and performance to students young and old.

“She was loving and she was rigorous,” says Thom Allison, a Winnipeg-born performer who prepared for his theatre-school audition under Drake’s tutelage. “She would work you like a professional. Never spoon-fed, and that respect made you want to be a better performer.”

“She (Nancy Drake) was loving and she was rigorous. She would work you like a professional. Never spoon-fed, and that respect made you want to be a better performer.”–Thom Allison

“We all idolized Nancy,” adds Jackson, who was 14 when she met Drake.

After acquiring the play in 2020, Hunter, McArton, Nagle, Burpee and Drake gathered in Jackson’s living room to read through Escaped Alone on the eve of lockdown.

Drake read Mrs. Jarrett. “All of our hairs stood on end,” Nagle recalls. “It was sublime.”

Hunter calls Drake “incapable of being dishonest on stage.”

With the pandemic’s arrival — which didn’t feel too dissimilar from the apocalypse — production hit a standstill, moving to Hunter’s own backyard as fears abated. But Drake began experiencing health issues; she died in September 2020 at the age of 77.

“All of our hairs stood on end. It was sublime.”–Maggie Nagle

The women were rattled by the loss of their colleague and friend, and decided that should the production ever occur, it would be dedicated to Drake’s memory.

That’s exactly what will happen when Escaped Alone opens in the Colin Jackson Theatre this week. In 2019, one of Drake’s final performances, a one-woman show entitled Number 12, ran in the very same room.

“We have a high standard to reach,” McArton says.

After a quick break to chat about Drake, the play, and life as septuagenarian actors in Winnipeg, Burpee, McArton, Hunter and Nagle sit down in their lawn chairs and continue to do the work they set out to do.

Four women sat talking, all the while thinking of a fifth.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

Ben Waldman
Reporter

Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.

   Read full biography