THEATRE PREVIEW:
Published in
Mary
Mallon. Ever heard of her? Maybe you recognize her nickname: Typhoid Mary.
"A
lot of people didn't know she was a real person," says Mark St. Germain,
playwright of "Forgiving Typhoid Mary," which has its
The
story worked as a scare tactic, but it was also true. Health department officials gave Mallon the
moniker, but in 1909, sensationalistic newspapers called Typhoid Mary "the
most harmless and the most dangerous woman in
Despite
enormous publicity, a legal trial, and several subsequent books, surprisingly
little is known about Mary Mallon.
"She was reclusive and aggressive," explains St. Germain. "She smashed the cameras of
photographers." In the play, she
hurls dishes at doctors.
Mallon
came to this country on an immigrant ship; her date of arrival and country of
origin are unknown. As a cook, she was
an ideal transmitter of typhoid bacteria, which can contaminate the food or
water handled by a victim or carrier.
Mallon
never contracted the disease, but her trial proved that she infected 53 people,
three of whom died, and her autopsy (performed in 1938, following a stroke)
revealed a body riddled with typhoid bacillus.
The last 27 years of her life were spent in forced seclusion at
The
shadow of the AIDS crisis hovers over "Forgiving Typhoid Mary," with
its focus on irrational fear of infection, personal and medical responsibility
in the face of a deadly disease, and the tendency to blame a pandemic on
immigrants. But this is no AIDS play,
and the story is fascinating in its own right.
Supplementing
historical record with imagination, St. Germain set the piece in 1909-10,
during Mary's first confinement in the hospital cottage. He invents a female doctor (played by Kerry
Meads) to face off with Mary (Deborah Gilmour Smyth), and a priest (Robert Smyth)
who visits her regularly. There's also a
smarmy hospital administrator (David Heath) and an ingenuous eight year-old,
perhaps the only person Mary ever loved.
Mary was Sarah's cook; Sarah succumbed to typhoid.
The
title role has been played by Linda Hunt and Estelle Parsons, and the play was
cited by Time Magazine as one of 1991's ten best. Its non-linear, episodic structure poses
production challenges, with frequent cross-cuts of place, time and character.
"The
single set location plays well with the audience imagination," says
actor/director Robert Smyth. "It's
cerebral and complex, but [St. Germain] isn't making a political
statement. He presents all sides of the
issues."
To
keep the rhythm from becoming choppy, Smyth asked his wife, Deborah, to compose
musical transitions. "I'm trying to
create some tension with the music, but make it subtle, incidental,
unobtrusive," explains the eight-time Lamb's composer. "It's slightly percussive, not exactly
melodic. I'm experimenting with
sub-woofers under the floor, to create sensation as well as sound."
As
for the central character she plays, what fascinates Deb Smyth is that
"she's not really likable. I'm
trying to find out what she cares about, what she's fighting for. I've been thinking a lot about her isolation,
being locked away, not being touched, with everyone afraid of her.... That makes me excuse a lot of things she
says. I can excuse bad behavior if
someone is truthful and passionate. I
like that she's so incredibly direct and intelligent. And she asks hard questions about faith and
God."
Amid
his other pre-production concerns, Robert Smyth doesn't worry that this may be
a tough sell for his audience. They
liked the play during a staged reading three years ago. And a musical written by St. Germain and
composer Randy Courts, "Johnny Pye and the Fool Killer," was well
received in 1990.
"They
were provoked and intrigued," says Smyth of the early "Typhoid
Mary" viewers. "Our audiences
are so diverse. Some may write letters,
but most will just want to discuss the play afterward... Letters don't bother me. And if they come
from both sides of the issue [as they did following the recent Lamb's
production of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"], then we must be doing
something good."
DATEBOOK
"FORGIVING TYPHOID MARY"
The
PAT
LAUNER is a freelance writer and the theater critic for KPBS-FM.
©1996 Patté
Productions Inc.