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Margaret Atwood's mysterious true crime unfolds in 'Alias Grace' at Heartland Theatre

Mindy Smith, left, and John Bowen play the lead characters in Heartland Theatre Company's production of Alias Grace.
Lauren Warnecke
/
WGLT
Mindy Smith, left, and John Bowen play the lead characters in Heartland Theatre Company's production of Alias Grace.

Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale was thrust back into the zeitgeist in 2017. Hulu’s wildly popular television series starring Elisabeth Moss vividly recreated an imagined dystopian near future, in which democracy falls and the United States devolves into an oppressive theocracy spurred by falling birthrates.

That same year, 2017, a slightly quieter release on competing platform Netflix took up another of Atwood’s books, Alias Grace. The 1996 novel extrapolates on the true story of Grace Marks, an Irish housekeeper convicted of killing her employers in 1843. And in what turned out to be a very big year for Margaret Atwood, 2017 was also the year playwright Jennifer Blackmer adapted the historical fiction into a play, premiered at Chicago’s Rivendell Theater.

For their first play of the year, Don LaCasse directs Heartland Theatre Company in Blackmer’s script, running Feb. 6-22.

Mindy Smith of Champaign is in the title role as Grace Marks. Smith said she loves Heartland but has to pick her plays carefully since it means committing to a two-hour round trip drive every day (in this case, in sub-zero temps). Grace Marks shares some similarities with Dr. Mabry Hoffman, an anthropologist interrogated after an information-gathering assignment in Iraq in another of Blackmer’s plays, Human Terrain. That was the first role Smith vied for Heartland—something about interrogations apparently appeals to her.

In Alias Grace, John Bowen of Normal plays a fictional psychologist, Simon Jordan, tasked with determining whether Grace is telling the truth. Incarcerated for 15 years by the time Jordan meets her, Marks claims she has no memory of the crime.

Smith said the play is as much about Bowen’s character as it is about hers.

“You’re the only one who never leaves the stage,” she said in conversation with Bowen for WGLT’s Sound Ideas. “The mystery is about Grace, but I think the weight of whose story it is, is equal.”

“I would say I’m an avenue for the audience to understand your story,” Bowen said.

Little is known about the real-life Grace Marks, who was born c. 1828 in Ireland and immigrated with her parents and eight siblings in 1840. Her mother died on the journey to Canada; Grace was sent work as a maid and support her family. Marks’ employers, Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery, were brutally murdered in 1843. Marks and another servant, James McDermott, fled to upstate New York before being apprehended and convicted; McDermott was put to death.

“It is a true crime, but it’s a true crime that is filled with a lot of questions and mystery,” said Smith. “It’s not like a true crime that was solved, and wrapped up with a bow, and everyone was satisfied by the end. I think the goal of this show is that people leave a bit confused—which some people hate. If we do our job right, there should be some questions.”

“That’s one of the challenges of the play,” Bowen said. “What really is the truth? That’s what the doctor is trying to do. I think he comes to realize more things about himself than he does about Grace—not always very pleasant things.”

Dr. Jordan arguably has less control of his delicate doctor-patient relationship with Grace Marks, despite her circumstances. The same could be said of Montgomery, who is pregnant with Kinnear’s child at the time of her death.

“None of the women in this play allow themselves to be victims,” Smith said. “They don’t inherently have much power, and yet, they’re all quite strong in their own ways. They find ways to make decisions that ensure their overall story is not one of being a victim.”

Through their conversations, Dr. Jordan employs what was then groundbreaking talk therapy techniques to try to get at the truth of what happened by “unlocking” Grace’s memories.

“At its heart, the play is a mystery,” Bowen said. “What happened? Who really committed the murder? Why can’t she remember what happened that day?”

But in the end, Smith said, those aren’t the right questions to ask.

“The more important question is, what is the correct punishment for somebody given all of the conditions and circumstances she was faced with. I think all the questions are what’s fun about this show. Trying to answer them takes some of the fun out of it—at least trying to answer them too soon.”

Alias Grace runs February 6-22 at Heartland Theatre, 1110 Douglas St., Normal. Tickets are $19 at 309-452-8709 and heartlandtheatre.org.

Lauren Warnecke is a reporter at WGLT. You can reach Lauren at lewarne@ilstu.edu.