Three young women lit up the stage at the Angell Blackfriars Theatre at Providence College last weekend during the school's production of Agnes of God. Under the direction of John Garrity, the story of Agnes, a novice nun who is under investigation by the District Attorney unfolds in a dramatic collision of the spiritual and physical worlds.
Sarah Bedard as Agnes brings perfect, childlike innocence to the stage and flips back and forth from endearing to frustrating the other two women who make up this play's powerful trio.
Dr. Martha Livingstone, played by Malika Jones, and Mother Miriam Ruth, played by Nancy Anastadis, battle each other throughout as each woman claims the moral high ground and insists that she, alone, has Agnes' best interest in mind.
As the mysteries of the mind go toe-to-toe against the mysteries of Faith, the audience is pulled into the orbit of Agnes, a troubled girl with a repressed past whose faith is as strong and beautiful as her singing.
Her mother kept her locked in their house while she was a child and after her death Agnes was sent straight to the convent. Agnes spent her entire life in complete isolation from the rest of the world. One night in the convent she was found unconscious shortly after giving birth in the convent, her baby was found in a wastepaper basket in the room, strangled. Agnes claims no memory of the birth, or even the conception, and the Mother Superior clings to the possibility that there is a divine answer to the worldly questions of guilt and innocence.
In a memorable exchange, when Livingstone confronts her about the father's identity, Mother Miriam responds: "Why must he be anybody?" Agnes is an "innocent" according to her Mother Superior and as such cannot endure the reopening of old wounds by the court-appointed psychiatrist.
But, Dr. Livingstone argues, the evaluation is her only chance for salvation; she will otherwise be thrown on the mercy of the courts. While they posture for control of the 21-year-old their own dark histories are brought to light in harsh criticisms of each other's beliefs – the Church versus modern medicine.
Mother Miriam strikes the first blow, recognizing the doctor's underlying contempt for religion: "I can smell an ex-Catholic a mile away," she taunts Livingstone. Livingstone, after revealing the root of her religious aversion, strikes back: "I ran away from the Church as quickly as my mind could take me...poverty, chastity, ignorance – that's what you live by."
All the while, Agnes is undergoing a spectacular psychiatric meltdown, complete with flashbacks, voices, hypnosis and some severe issues with her mother played gracefully and effectively by Bedard.
Mother Miriam's priority is shielding the child from her past and from the evils of the world, leaving her future in God's hands. To Livingstone, leaving God and the Church behind and facing "reality" is the first step toward Agnes' psychological well-being and judicial redemption.
Audiences cannot help but be pulled into this world and will leave full of questions about medicine, faith and guilt. Watching these three women bring to life the complexities of these questions is a real treat. Agnes of God, at Providence College until February 3, is the perfect intellectual antidote to the reality television and game shows that lately suffice for entertainment.
