'Mother Lode' sensationalizes an awful footnote in Michigan history
'Mother Lode' sensationalizes an awful footnote in Michigan history
By JOSHUA PECK
On December 24. 1913. 74 men. women, and children of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula died in a grotesque tragedy in a booming copper mining town now called Calu-
A Christmas party that day at the town's Italian Hall came to an abrupt end when someone yelled "Fire!." provoking a rush for the lone exit that resulted in the 74 townspeople being trampled and suffocated. The criminal who instigated the disaster was never identified.
The incident would have remained merely an awful footnote in Michigan history had not the eye of a university student named John L. Beem been caught by it in 1978. He traveled north to research the incident, and gradually it dawned on him that the events surrounding the disaster might be good material for a play. -
And thus was a miserable bit of history made into “The Mother Lode." two insipid hours of tastelessness in the guise of drama now on display at The Performance Network.
gan. There is a shadow of a Greek chorus, but none of the other requisite elements: no heroic characters. no hand of Fate. The deaths are obviously the result of one cruel act coupled with the outright stupidity of adults who panicked when the false alarm was sounded.
And there is more foolish business yet: "Mother Lode" becomes
a labor union polemic, ghost story, love story, family drama, and an admonition against morbid humor.
Somewhere in here. Beem has buried what he seems to regard as High Art. The action jumps back and forth between 1938, 1913. and some nonsensical combination of the two that the playwright evidently considers justified by the
weightiness of the subject matter.
The young reporter’s voyage, it seems, is primarily spiritual, or perhaps equally physical and spiritual. or perhaps neither.
The real mystery here is just what message the playwright thinks we ought to discover in the Calumet disaster Man’s Inhumanity to Man, perhaps, or Socrates’ admonition to "Know Thyself" (as in the young reporter's startling discoveries about himself).
But this critic walked away with the suspicion that John Beem has nothing at all on his mind. It seemed that he reasoned it was time for an "artist" one with an eye for the sensational to exploit a tragedy thus far undiscovered by
the National Enquirer or any other equally reputable journal. With the spectacle dressed as art. people can come to the theater, enjoy every lurid moment, and never suffer a hint of shame. *
Shame, shame.
The play is embarrassingly ambitious; Beem with the complicity of director Jim Moran, has at least half a dozen separate ill-considered projects in the works here. All are appalling.
"Mother Lode" is first, a mystery with more holes than story. Early on we meet Garret and Denslowe. a reporter and editor who. twenty-five years after the disaster. go to Calumet to look into the story in hopes of finding out more about it perhaps even the identity of the perpetrator. (What editor, you might ask, ever accompanied a reporter on a simple feature story?)
The story later doubles back to explain that little perplexity but credibility has long since been breached. Besides, the explanation creates yet more convoluted plot problems, which Beem conveniently overlooks.
Beem next turns archivist, when he has the fictional journalists meet several non-fictional and amply documented - residents of Calumet. Thus does the playwright teach us a healthy appreciation for this multi-ethnic blend of hardy U.P.’ers. By this time, however, the mystery is the thing. Historical trifles seem just that.
Then, too. some of these factual characters are so absurdly overplayed that their historicity is more comic than compelling. David Bernstein, a fine Scrooge in a Network performance last December. here seems to be playing Pen-hallegon as a rotund Popeye; he barks his way through the role with an impenetrable accent rarely found this side of Saturday morning television.