Boots on the Ground Presents 'The Chalk Garden,' a Show Filled With Comedy and Mystery

Boots on the Ground Theater, the company in residence at the Southampton Cultural Center, is exploring change, love and loneliness in “The Chalk Garden,” an English play by Enid Bagnold, who also wrote “National Velvet,” a 1935 novel which kick-started Elizabeth Taylor’s film career.

Mark Heidemann, who directs this production, said the play mixes comedy and mystery. Bonnie Grice, an actress in the play and the founder of Boots on the Ground, said the show is akin to a “psychological cat and mouse game.”

This show marks the company’s fifth production at Southampton Cultural Center, and Kirsten Lonnie, the executive director of SCC, said having Boots on the Ground in residence is a welcome treat. She’s also looking forward to seeing a ripe British comedy.

“The quality of the productions is impressive and incredible,” she said “And everything they have done at the cultural center and with us has been very well received and well attended.”

“The Chalk Garden” is set in England in 1955. Its story spans three generations of women, centering around a family matriarch, Mrs. St. Maugham (played by Bonnie Grice) living with her granddaughter, Laurel (Cheyanne Metzger), and her manservant and bedridden butler Maitland (Tom Gregory). Mrs. St. Maugham needs a new governess to keep an eye on her grandchild, and after placing an ad in the paper, chooses the unorthodox and mysterious Miss Madrigal (Josephine Teresi-Wallace). As the story unfolds, a judge and old friend (Kevin Magee) makes an appearance, impacting the life of the governess forever.

Of course, true to its title, the play centers around a garden.

“It’s funny, funny as hell, but it’s also a mystery,” Grice said of the story. “There’s almost some Alfred Hitchcock element to it. The governess comes in, she has a mysterious past and, it’s something that people are going to be guessing at until the very end of the play. And in fact, we don’t even know [the meaning of the ending].”

The mystery of the show is a metaphor for life, explained Heidemann. “Life can be a mysterious thing and it’s not always the way you think it’s going to turn out.”

Grice loves history and classic plays. Heidemann, who also directed Boots on the Ground’s most recent production “Chemical Imbalance: A Jekyll and Hyde Play,” which was a fun spin on a classic story, decided another classic was the way to go. Heidemann said he had heard about this play, which premiered on Broadway in 1955 before heading to London, and he was struck by how fresh and relevant it still is today.

“It’s almost like Enid Bagnold, the playwright, was writing about a lot of the stuff we’re going through right now,” he said. “Change is probably one of the main elements of the play and it’s so hard to keep up nowadays. It seems like every time you turn around, everything is changing around you. This play looks at an earlier century, the mid-20th century where the atomic age was upon us and people are suddenly realizing, ‘Oh, we’re not living the same way we used to live’ but they’re still kind of trying to hold on to what’s familiar.”

Heidemann also admires the clear-eyed nature of Bagnold’s writing, and what he finds to be the flawless way she expressed her views on life and love through her characters, in their frank monologues and willingness to speak their minds without the fear of repercussions.

Grice said her goal when she started Boots on The Ground was to give others opportunities in the theater to do things they haven’t previously had the chance to do. This play has done just that, with actors like Cheyanne Metzger, a Riverhead High School student making her debut. This is Heidemann’s third directing role with Boots on The Ground, the same company where he made his directorial debut.

When the play was selected, he said he immediately thought of Grice for the role of Mrs. St. Maugham, one of the two main roles.

“She’s the matriarch of the family and laugh out loud funny, and Bonnie’s great with comedy,” he said. “But there’s also pathos in the script and she manages that really well. I knew she’d be able to take this one home for us.”

Grice added that she was attracted to Mrs. St. Maugham’s complexity as a character — a loud and boisterous woman on the outside, but vulnerable about her aging on the inside.

“She is bombastic. She’s funny as hell,” Grice said. “She rules the roost, but she’s getting older. She’s 70. And she was at her height at one point, as she says, and is no longer. I like mining her vulnerability. I love that challenge.”

Heidemann first worked with Teresi-Wallace, playing Miss Madrigal, when she directed him in the company’s production of “Sherlock’s Secret Life.” He’s also worked with Gregory, who will play Maitland, twice in the past.

“He always manages to deliver the goods when I need something only Tom can deliver,” Heidemann said.

Gregory said his character, who has the short end of the stick being bedridden, also has valuable lessons to share.

“We have the unseen guy upstairs who’s sort of like God,” he said. “It’s an interesting parable about where we are as human beings in life at any time in modern day.

“It’s a great play. It’s an amalgam of just about everything in life.”

Rounding out the cast is Magee, a former television producer, and Nancee Moes, a Stony Brook University professor who will play multiple roles. Esmeralda Cabrera will play Olivia, Mrs. St. Maugham’s daughter. Cabrera previously starred in “Chemical Imbalance.” She said the mother daughter relationship explored in the show is another example of its relatable aspects.

“Olivia and her mother — there’s that hope that maybe their relationship’s going to get better as mother and daughter. It doesn’t seem like it is, but there was that hope maybe in the end it will get better,” she said “We don’t know for sure. But I feel like that represents a lot of relationships with mothers and daughters in the world.”

Evelyn Lubrano, the stage manager, and Second Applicant, impressed Heidemann with her acting ability, and Heidemann and Grice described Metzger, who is only 16, and plays Laurel as “brilliant.”

Metzger said the biggest challenge of the role has been the vocabulary in the script, knowing how to pronounce it and knowing what specific things are. She said the role has been an “educational experience.”

“I feel like I can be very big and bold in my character,” she said. ‘It’s a lot of testing and seeing where things go. I would definitely wish to have as much confidence as she does throughout the show.”

Quite witty herself, she also enjoys having fun with the wit her character, Laurel, exudes.

Heidemann said he tries to foster a collaborative and, most importantly, fun environment within his cast. “It is a small community,” he said. “People have jobs and they kind of come in and out sometimes of the theater world. These are people that are volunteering their time. There’s little to no pay a lot of times and they’re just doing it for the love of creating something together.”

As for the audiences, he’s pretty sure they’re going to enjoy what they see.

“I hope they laugh and I hope that they come away feeling like they saw something that was pretty special,” Heidemann said. “I think people are going to really relate to a lot of the characters in the show, and the ones that you don’t relate to, I think you’re going to come away saying ‘Wow, that was something I’m not going to see anywhere else these days.’”

Boots on the Ground’s production of “The Chalk Garden” runs October 6 to October 15, Friday and Saturday, at 7 p.m. with Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets are $35 ($25 students under 21) at scc-arts.org or at the door 40 minutes before showtime. Brunch and dinner theater packages are available Tickets and dinner packages are available from Claude’s Restaurant and Southampton Publick House, both within walking distance of the theater. Southampton Cultural Center is at 25 Pond Lane, Southampton.