She arrives like a bride, fully swathed in filmy white, and her passion for Christ is not unlike that of a new wife in love. Newly initiated into the upstate New York convent of the Sisters of the Crucifixion, Mariette's clearly different in a world that values moderation and where secrets are impossible -she's enigmatic, if not wildly romantic. "The wind feels like hands," she thrills, standing apart from the others.
That peculiar observation emblematizes Mariette's compelling mysteriousness for the other nuns (uniformly portrayed by an outstanding ensemble with wit and skillfully etched detail), who end up in varying degrees of obsession with her -whether envy, possession, desire or loathing - and for us, viewing a play that's a suspenseful and subtle inquiry on faith. Many questions are asked, and few answers are given, but satisfyingly so. Played by Brenda Barrie with gorgeous vitality constrained by delicate grace, Mariette is passionate - or is she hysterical? Devoted or opportunistic? Saintly or sensual?
The seamless collaboration among Hansen's spare prose, Calvit's adroit adaptation and Kauzlaric's deft production (commendably stripped of any contemporaneity but flush with the sounds of the cloister - the rhythm of work and haunting refrains of chants) ponders the larger question of whether faith is fortified by community, tradition and structure, or by intensely personal experience. Mariette in Ecstasy loses some of its taut urgency as the story unfolds and sometimes borders on the melodramatic, but for a story centering on the ascetic life of nuns in cloister at the turn of the 20th century, its riches are plentiful.
