Robert Chafe: Two Plays

by Robert Chafe

Two plays with a deep sense of Newfoundland’s history. Butler’s Marsh explores 30-year-old family secrets hidden in the dark, dense woods. In Tempting Providence, Myra Grimsley boards a steam ship from London in 1921, charged to serve as the sole health provider for the sparsely settled coast of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula.

Genres: Plays, Canada, Theatre

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2004

Reviews

[Hannah Baker · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for School

[Becks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only read "Tempting Providence", and I loved it. I remember seeing the touring production Jillian Keiley directed many years ago, and it was some of the best directing I've ever seen. I love the Keiley/Chafe duo.

[Beatriz Cordeiro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read to be in the show. Very misterious and kind of weird hahaha. Tim is crazy

[Seth]

Just read "Tempting Providence."

Lovely play.

[katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Butler's Marsh:
I don't have a ton of experience reading plays but I seem to like the strange ones. I'd love to see this one performed.

[Lucile Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

183. Two Plays by Robert Chafe
These two plays, Butler’s Marsh and Providence, could not be more different. They both stand up and both take place in Newfoundland. Both were also nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Butler’s Marsh is a two-person play that is set in the Newfoundland woods. A young woman has gone to a place where her mother was found years ago after disappearing for several days, blood-covered and mentally distraught. Is her boyfriend with her or is she hallucinating him? Was her mother pregnant when she went into the woods? Why does everyone, male or female, who spends a night in Butler’s Marsh go mad? Providence is an historical piece with the subsidiary actors playing several roles. It is based on the life of a British nurse, Myra Grimsley, who comes to an outport to meet the needs of the local people, has to work for acceptance in the village, marries a local fisherman and stays for life. Gentle and lovely, with segments of what she did for the community, and it reflects the history of the outports and the people who lived there.

[Colin Bruce Anthes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tempting Providence: alas, like a number of historical Canadian plays, rather like vomiting candy canes.

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read Tempting Providence only.

[Lara Maynard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Of the two plays, Tempting Providence is much stronger and I really enjoyed a production of it starring Deidre Gillard-Rowlings as Nurse Bennett at The Rooms in St. John's.