Black Button Eyes Productions Presents MARY ROSE Review – Venturing into the Mystical

Black Button Eyes Productions’ Cast Brings Naturalness

Mary Rose is part classic British mystery and part ghost story, elements that Rutherford and Bouthiette meld in a rich, dark score. Soaring at times with operatic intensity, the piece overcomes some bumpy transitions that slightly distracted this viewer. As Mary Rose, Stephanie Stockstill shifts between sparkle and portent, making it easy to feel her loved ones’ pain when she leaves them. In addition to vocal power, Stockstill and the rest of the cast bring naturalness to the plot’s supernatural and melodramatic turns.

Though titled Mary Rose, the story’s true psychological and emotional center rests, in this writer’s opinion, with the Chaplain, played with counterpoint passion by Kevin Webb. The limping veteran of World War I tours the vacant manor house while its crusty caretaker, Mrs. Otery (Rosalind Hurwitz), tries to dissuade him from the cursed property.

Soon it becomes clear that he has a larger agenda, and that his military service has wounded him to the core. In What Am I Doing Here?, a number that aches with survivor’s guilt, he sings of “waiting for the day I can shake hands with death.”

MARY ROSE Stretches the Imagination

Musicals tend to be a long time in the making. If Mary Rose followed a standard path to its recent opening night, Rutherford and Bouthiette began their adaptation before Covid-19 tore across the globe. Two years into the pandemic, the mind jumps to patients on ventilators, in limbo between their corporal existence and intangible beyond. For those willing to venture into mystical territory, Mary Rose is likely to stretch the imagination.

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Photos by Liz Lauren