Grace Pervades was a beautiful love letter written to theatre and the people that love theatre so much! After having more of a talk about it with Shawn, I was able to appreciate it more because he told me more of the history about it and the fact that the play was about real people.This is definitely a play that you should educate yourself about the history beforehand to understand it a little better, my bad. The acting, the wittiness, the lighting, and the set were absolutely beautiful, I was blown away!
The play shows the relationship between Henry Irving and Ellen Terry showing the history of theatre, sacrifice, and obsession with the arts. Ellen was definitely the character that stood most out to me, her loyalty to Henry I just couldn’t understand, but maybe I just wasn’t paying attention to the right things. Sure, Henry was an amazing actor and owned the theatre but he would leave her behind, ignore her, and he had a wife. She stayed by his side and in total support of him, just wanting his admiration and opinion that was so hard to get out of him. Now that I’m thinking about it, maybe that was the obsession all along was the need of his approval.
Through out the play I also couldn’t quite form an opinion on the fact if she was humble or she was insecure. Even though she was an amazing actor, loved by many, she kept saying she wasn’t the amazing actor in the family, her sister was. Part of me thought she just didn’t want to take the compliments but the other part me thought, OMG HOW YOU CAN YOU SAY THAT YOU’RE BASICALLY A HOUSEHOLD NAME!!!
The dancing in the play was so beautiful and free and I actually thought it was extremely pretty. The set was so beautifully put together bringing you back in time, helping you understand when places in scenes changed, and just visually very pretty and intense. All the actors played their characters extremely well! Our seats thoughhh, those were rough and so uncomfortable, but you can’t have everything!!
Theatre in London U of A 