Few Weeds in ‘Chalk Garden’
Gardens provide apt metaphors for life, what with all the planting, weeding and nurturing.
British author Enid Bagnold built an entire story of such metaphors in her 1956 play “The Chalk Garden.” Little remembered today, the play has resurfaced in a production by the fledgling Pathway Theater Company, presented in borrowed space in Mission Viejo. As lovingly tended to by director John Haggard and his performers, the show blooms with curious delights.
Bagnold (1889-1981) is probably best remembered for her story “National Velvet,” about a butcher’s young daughter and her dream of entering her horse in the Grand National steeplechase. Most often, however, Bagnold wrote about England’s upper classes.
“The Chalk Garden” takes place in 1953 in the Sussex, England, manor house of the eccentric widow Mrs. St. Maugham.
The house and its occupants have seen better days. St. Maugham and her granddaughter, Laurel, live there with just one servant, while the former butler--an imperious man who represents all that was grand in the old days--lies upstairs dying (a particularly Chekhovian piece of symbolism).
St. Maugham loves to garden but can grow nothing. The same is true of raising her family. Her relationship with her daughter (Laurel’s mother) is strained, and Laurel--who has been living with Grandma since Mama’s remarriage--is growing into a willful young woman. When the mysterious Miss Madrigal--employed both to supervise Laurel and to garden--asks, “When will you learn you live on chalk?,” she is talking about more than flowers.
Haggard stages the story with an eye for character detail, though he could have paid more attention to pacing and variation.
Penny Radcliffe plays St. Maugham as a high-spirited woman with an airy lack of interest in things that most other people consider vital. (She was, alas, a little too airy about remembering her lines on opening night, but perhaps that will disappear with time.)
Erika Dittner is appropriately poker-faced as Miss Madrigal, a woman of many secrets--though perhaps too much so, as her performance comes off a bit flat.
The most consistently watchable performer is Erin Ganas, a junior at Laguna Beach High School, as Laurel. She says and does outrageous things with a breathless disregard for consequence--a typical teen multiplied to the nth power.
The show is performed in a church’s worship hall, so the set and lights are necessarily minimal and portable. Instead of stately mansion walls, Pathway can manage only curtained partitions. It’s a tribute to this ambitious group that we’re presented with enough other detail to fill in the picture ourselves.
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* “The Chalk Garden,” a Pathway Theater Company presentation at the West Coast Church, 25991 Pala, Mission Viejo. 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday. Ends Saturday. $10. (714) 460-2926. Running time: 2 hours, 14 minutes.
Erika Dittner: Miss Madrigal
Penny Radcliffe: Mrs. St. Maugham
Erin Ganas: Laurel
Yvette Lundy: Olivia
Timothy John Pacific: Maitland
Gilbert D. Konowitch: The Judge
Connie Moore: Nurse
Wendy Piatt: Second Applicant
Sarah Simmonds: Third Applicant
A Pathway Theater Company production. Written by Enid Bagnold. Directed by John Haggard. Assistant director: Dania Brenneise. Set: Timothy John Pacific, John Haggard. Costumes and props: Connie Moore. Lights and sound: Dana Lundy.
