Tension, Drama in the Drawing Room

What are we to make of a play like “The Chalk Garden,” with a sell-by date past 60 years? Written by Enid Bagnold, the Englishwoman best known for “National Velvet,” the story of a girl and her horse, “The Chalk Garden” is a curiosity: a deep dive into family dynamics masquerading as a drawing-room comedy. The awkward combination is exceedingly difficult to pull off. The new Sherman Players production struggles a bit in the beginning, but improves in the second half.

First, the plot: A woman, Miss Madrigal (Noel Desiato), with a mysterious and possibly tragic past, applies to be the governess for a rebellious teenage girl, Laurel (Erin Shaughnessy). Laurel lives in the country home of her eccentric but tradition-bound grandmother, Mrs. St. Maugham (Jody Bayer), along with a servant (Charles Roth) and a nurse (Lynn Nissenbaum) who cares for the bedridden, never-seen butler, Mr. Pinkbell. The strong-willed Mrs. St. Maugham is estranged from her daughter, Olivia (Priscilla Squiers), who divorced Laurel’s father, remarried an Arab man, and left Laurel behind.

The drama flows in a kind of race against time: Will Miss Madrigal crack the family’s code, so to speak, and rescue the troubled Laurel before her own past catches up with her? And will she save the estate’s garden, where nothing much has grown under the apparently tyrannical oversight of the dying butler?

In this setup, metaphor abounds (for example, rhododendrons — which are laurels — don’t grow in this garden), wisdom, or what passes for it, is dispensed like coins in a fountain, and, most of all, words tumble forth like waterfalls. Yes, words are the stuff of any play, but here the torrent seems to erase any possibility of reflection or action.

And coursing through the play are currents of proto-feminism, the struggle of old versus new ways, and the ascendancy of Freudian analysis, which tend to pull it back into the time period in which it was written. 

“The Chalk Garden” unfolds on so many levels, it requires direction and acting of exceptional nuance to retain the light touch of humor while ratcheting up the drama.

It’s the humor that is most missing in the Sherman production. Sluggish pacing in the lengthy first scene threatens to dash the whole enterprise before it can get off the ground. The key character is Miss Madrigal, of course, and Desiato employs an overripe series of sidelong glances and weighty line readings to signal, far too soon, her dilemma. 

Fortunately, Shaughnessy and Bayer enliven the stage considerably, and Squiers, as the darkly angry daughter, Olivia, makes a compelling presence.

Pulled along by the mounting tension, the show improves as it goes. In the second act, the arrival of a lunch guest (John Coleman Taylor) who may hold the answer to Miss Madrigal’s secret provides the deus ex machina that propels the action forward. Given the chance for all-out emotional confrontation, the cast delivers.

The difficulties encountered in this first performance may owe partly to the time-bound nature of the script, and partly to opening-night jitters. If director Chesley Plemmons can settle his players down and pick up the pace, this will be something to see.

“The Chalk Garden” is playing at the Sherman Playhouse in Sherman, Conn., through Oct. 9. For tickets and information, go to www.shermanplayers.org or call 860-354-3622.