“Madelines,” a review: performance and process of playmaking

Typically when people attend a play, they make an entire evening out of it, most often spending an hour or two in preparation, grooming their hair and tossing around their clothes in search of the spiffiest outfit they can find. As for the play itself, there’s usually an air of stress among those working on and off the stage, ensuring everything goes according to plan.

Deviating from this usual play protocol, director of “Madeleines,”visiting lecturer in the theater and arts department Bess Welden, opened up her play-in-progress to the Colby community on Oct. 3 in Runnals to receive constructive criticism and feedback from students at the College.

Standing up on the dimly lit stage, three actresses in everyday jeans and t-shirts hovered closely over their individual podiums, scripts in hand and eyes lingering over the stack of unfinished pages.

The play rehearsal was not, however, a disappointment as one might assume given the lack of costumes, backdrops, and props.

The actresses passionately embodied their roles, going further than expected to provide the audience with a window of insight into the process of play-making. 

Centering around a family of Jewish women who learn to properly love and care for one another in spite of their shared and tormented past, the emotional play strung the audience along for one and a half hours of sensational yet heart wrenching content.

Actress Janice O’Rourke perfectly filled the role of her character Debra, a struggling food writer who returned to her childhood home to care for her mother Rose who, although an outstanding baker, was a rather difficult and closed-off individual (to put it nicely).

Carrying herself with such a casual but nonetheless profound presence on stage, O’Rourke made for a very convincing Debra.

As Rose’s health deteriorated in the beginning of the show, the emotion of the play escalated quickly, leaving the audience unsure how the script could take things any further.

Surprisingly, Welden managed to create several more emotional escalations throughout as Debra and her sister uncovered several mysteries and secrets about the family’s past during the play following Rose’s recent death.

Upon Rose’s passing, Debra’s older sister Jennifer arrived in town for the funeral, stirring in her old feelings of jealousy and resentment given Jennifer’s lifelong record of anomalous accomplishment.

The two spend their days in bouts of bickering while baking together again. They slowly start to bond over memories surrounding their childhood and strained relationships with their exceptionally stubborn mother and her language of baking.

They recalled when she was proud of the girls as children and how she would, instead of saying the words, always provide the girls with cookies. Though annoyed that Debra’s sister’s track record with success warranted her more cookies, the girls ultimately rejoiced in those memories together.

Three years later, when Debra returns to her home in New York City to promote her cookbook, she finds an emotionally wrecked Jennifer in her home. The women must repair their relationship once more.

The play’s overarching themes of loss, love, family ties, and baking offered a realistic portrayal of a family dynamic with its many ups and downs followed by reparative mechanisms, like baking in this case. The rivalry between the girls, in particular, showed the reality of sibling relationships and how they carry over into adulthood, but also how only siblings can truly relate to one another as they’ve endured the same past.

“Madeleines,” being the theater production that it is, had several scenes of displayed emotion and inspiring acting, so the story engaged the audience.

Bess Welden, the playwright, has received accolades and awards for past plays. She has been a teaching artist at the College since 2010, and she will continue working to develop “Madeleines” as a play.

~ Jenna Boling `24