Sparrow and Starlight shine brightly in spellbinding production of Tara Beagan's 'The Ministry of Grace'

Bernard Starlight and Quelemia Sparrow in Siminovitch Prize winner and Calgary playwright Tara Beagan's Ministry of Grace, at the Grand theatre through April 23. Set and lighting by Andy Moro, costumes by Jolane Houle. Photo courtesy Alanna Bluebird.

When we first meet Mary (an extraordinary Quelemia Sparrow), a Ntlaka'pamux woman from B.C., she gets surprised by a preacher named Brother Cain (Stafford Perry, in the performance of a lifetime), in the opening scene of Calgary playwright Tara Beagan's moving drama The Ministry of Grace.

Brother Cain is all teeth and tweed, and practically sweating that unique brand of charisma that can only be described as televangelical.

However, it's 1950, somewhere in the western U.S., and televangelicalism hasn't been invented yet (that word may not have been invented yet).

Instead, preachers are itinerant travelling road warriors who travel from dusty field to dusty field, throwing up a tent and shepherding in the under-educated, emotionally-damaged, searching-for-a-saviour American masses to sell a little salvation for their tainted souls.

Mary's first response to Brother Cain is to threaten to whack him with a shovel.

After all, she's an Indigenous mom of two young kids who have been taken from her and sent off to school by the Canadian government. She's trying to get her wages from an abusive boss who won't pay up because she wouldn't let him sexually assault her.

That's when Brother Cain discovers that Mary can read the Bible, and it dawns upon him that she might be a novelty act for his travelling preacher circus, so he offers her a job and a chance to earn enough to make it back home to Canada.

The only rub, Brother Cain explains, is that he is going to change her name from Mary to Grace, because Mary is "too Catholic" for his brand of firebrand, speaking-in-tongues, hellfire-and-brimstone preaching.

CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMA

That's the launch point for The Ministry of Grace, Beagan's version of old-fashioned western drama.

I say 'old-fashioned' and 'western' because there's something a little throwback to The Ministry of Grace, in an emotionally satisfying, character-driven, 70s movie kind of way.

As The Ministry of Grace unfolds, Grace is forced to navigate the idiosyncrasies of Brother Cain, who is as inconsistent and unreliable a narrator as other notorious preachers from more recent days like Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Cain sexually preys on a farm girl, Lizzy Mae (Lara Schmitz, stellar), he drinks, he coughs a lot, and he rants and rages and threatens Grace and her new friend Clem (Bernard Starlight, awesome), an Indigenous labourer from Saskatchewan who becomes her protector.

Bernard Starlight and Quelemia Sparrow in The Ministry of Grace

There's a little bit of Of Mice and Men feeling to The Ministry of Grace, and a little bit Tender Mercies, Paris, Texas, and Fool for Love, too.

Starlight's Clem has a big basset hound quality to himself, but he's also navigating two huge traumas that haunt him. Starlight has a wonderful ability to listen onstage and his scenes with Sparrow crackle with one acting payoff after another. They're funny and sexy, lonely and longing and a wonderful reminder that when theatre is good, it's awesome.

Perry's Brother Cain is one of the more memorable characters to set foot on a Calgary stage in a long time. He's kind of a 1950 version of Frank Booth, the lunatic drug dealer played by Dennis Hopper in the 1986 film Blue Velvet.

Beagan wrote a hell of a part, and Perry, who always seems to be playing a detective in a Vertigo Theatre mystery, rises to the occasion in The Ministry of Grace again and again. He alternates between oily charms, Pentecostal preaching, grooming, threatening, preening, withholding, attacking and ultimately, paying a price for all of it.

That's because Lizzy Mae, who is tiny and uneducated and overwhelmed, isn't quite the pushover Brother Cain took her for. Schmitz manages to expertly navigate Lizzy Mae's evolution from victim of a predator to a young woman who gets mad as hell and won't take it anymore.

The entire four-ring circus is expertly navigated by Grace, who Sparrow expertly plays with equal parts humour, heartbreak, determination, resilience, passion and righteous rage.

Sparrow hardly seems to move at all throughout the story – Grace is the straight line to Brother Cain's frenetic, distracting wavy gravy – and yet she holds your attention scene after scene.

Beagan won the Siminovitch Prize, Canada's top award for a theatre artist, and she demonstrates in Making Treaty 7's excellent new production of her drama that she's as good at directing as she is at playwriting.

The staging is taut, the performances are memorable and the bannock at intermission is free!

The Ministry of Grace is onstage at The Grand Theatre through April 23.

Quelemia Sparrow in The Ministry of Grace (Photo: Twitter@MakingTreaty7)

Sunday's 2 p.m. matinee is Bring Your Elder day. If you identify as an Elder or want to bring your Elder, tickets are free.

For more information, go here.