A recent play on a person who meets a spy on a beach in Halifax, Maddy Heisler, caught my attention. Because I had not known that there were any such people on the Atlantic coast during wartime. It seemed feasible though because at that time we were defending our coasts against German U-boats that were disrupting sea trade, especially in the North Atlantic.
The play could have been tighter at points especially when boy meets girl or when the girlfriend discovers that her boyfriend has had a mysterious past. I mean that as he is writing a book which turns out to be his memoirs on his past, she might have been informed of his so called haunting experiences with a woman who he got pregnant. The author and playwright might have wanted the public to be in the dark about how far he got involved with this German woman whom he learned little about. Again there could have been a tightening on his revelation of her as being a spy or at least suspicious of her presence on the coast during wartime. By that I am referring to Jacob's younger self. When he meets a strange woman who he falls in love with as a teenager.
I am glad to see the work of a more creative and daring artistic director than his predecessor. Demonstrating one's skills comes out better through risk taking as far as I am concerned. The set design was superb and with a burning cross on stage, quite daring, but was that really necessary since this was the unfolding of a hidden love story and not a story of racism in itself? A certain amount of realism was added that went very well with the story such having an actual boat in a pool on stage with a lovely actress pretending to swim in it. An undertone of Myrtle's acceptance of racial intolerance and her reaction to the granddaughter of a Nazi criminal was well integrated into the play as well.
