Island charmer at Prairie Theatre: Easy to fall for Newfoundland-set Salt-Water Moon

Newfoundland is having quite the moment on Winnipeg stages.

While the smash musical Come From Away runs at the Royal MTC Mainstage, a Newfoundland-set story that couldn't be more different — but is nonetheless also a charmer — runs at Prairie Theatre Exchange.

David French's 1984 play Salt-Water Moon is a classic of Canadian theatre — part of his acclaimed series of plays about generations of the Mercer family. But Ravi Jain's production, brought here by Toronto's Factory Theatre and Jain's company, Why Not Theatre, reinvigorates it by paring it back to its hauntingly beautiful basics.

Set in Newfoundland in 1926, it tells, in real time over its 90 minutes, the story of one night in the courtship of Jacob Mercer (Danny Ghantous) and Mary Snow (Bahareh Yaraghi), two 18-year-olds with a fraught romantic past. They have a lot of history to work out as Jacob, newly returned from a year away in Toronto, tries to win over an angry Mary — and woo her from the stable, but boring, teacher she's engaged to.

It's in some ways a simple love story, but one that also manages to touch on themes of class, the pride and poverty of Newfoundland, and letting go of the past for an uncertain future.

It's also a touching and lovely script, and would hold up just fine if presented traditionally — but Jain's elegantly spare production is decidedly non-traditional.

It begins on a stage bare except for candles in glass holders arranged in circular patterns as musician/narrator Ania Soul, who serenades the audience pre-show, reads French's opening stage directions.

Some humour ensues here as we're given detailed description of set, costumes, even physical descriptions of characters — none of which match in the least what we see on an essentially bare stage and with actors in modern dress. Soul mainly provides subtle musical accompaniment, but also occasionally interjects throughout the show with stage directions.

It's a bit of meta-theatre that creates some comedy initially, but also serves to distance the audience at first — Jain seems to challenge us with his insistance that what we're watching isn't real, that this is just a story played out by actors on stage.

But its real charm — and magic — is how quickly it draws us in in spite of, or perhaps because of, that fact. French's writing — even in his stage directions — is poetic and finely honed, his characters likably complicated and real, and the romantic tension constant.

Before long, we're drawn deeply into Mary and Jacob's world, rooting for the pair as their romantic push and pull plays out.

Much of the credit is due, too, to finely nuanced performances from Ghantous and Yaraghi, who have a believable chemistry.

They also themselves reflect a certain updating and transplanting of French's classic. Ghantous, of Lebanese background, and Yaraghi, who is Iranian-Canadian, may not reflect what we imagine Newfoundland of 1926 looked like — or even the Canada of 34 years ago, when French's play premiered — but they do reflect a more modern and diverse nation. It's again a reminder that French's play, though specific in and inseparable from its setting, is a universal story.

Unlike that other Newfoundland play running a few blocks away, this isn't a big or flashy production. But Salt-Water Moon has an undeniable charm and quiet beauty that makes it easy to fall for.

Salt-Water Moon runs at Prairie Theatre Exchange until Feb. 11