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The Mystery Play is a detective story, a ghost story, and a memory play: a theatrical blending of Wit and The Woman In Black, it is a supernatural chiller of rattling cupboards, overnight séances, and spectral possessions where the "mystery" reveals a "miracle" beyond logic.
About the author
Josh MacDonald is a writer and actor living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His comedy-drama feature film
Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage was released by Seville Pictures/ Entertainment One in 2010. The screenplay for
Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage was based upon Josh's original play
Halo, a stage piece commissioned, produced, and toured by Two Planks and A Passion Theatre during MacDonald's time as the company's Writer-In-Residence (2001).
Halo has since been produced by many theatre companies across North America, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, California to New York state. Published by Talonbooks,
Halo is a curriculum title in various high schools and universities in Canada.
Whereverville was also commissioned and toured by Two Planks and a Passion Theatre and shortlisted for the National Arts Centre's On The Verge Festival, and is also published by Talonbooks.
Macdonald also works as a professional story editor, actor, and teacher. Recently, he was the playwriting instructor in the theatre department of Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Summary
The Mystery Play is a detective story, a ghost story, and a memory play: a theatrical blending of Wit and The Woman In Black. Though fully self-contained, The Mystery Play is also the second in a trilogy about crime-solving Sister Vivian Salter, a flinty, fifty-ish Catholic nun forced into the role of amateur sleuth. Each story in her trilogy was penned by a different playwright and commissioned by Ship’s Company Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia.
In The Mystery Play, Salter recounts her late-stage struggles with her own beliefs while also detailing her father George’s descent into Alzheimer’s. In his seventies, George is becoming prone to semi-violent outbursts, to speaking with phantoms in the middle of the night, and to eerie sleepwalking – all of which leave Salter exhausted and questioning the existence of God’s love. Then, into the adjoining suite next door moves a young schoolteacher, Jennifer Craig, and her husband, Peter. This newlywed couple seems perfect, and very much in love … until they don’t. By creeping attrition, Salter begins to suspect that terrible spousal abuse is taking place next door, and, despite herself, she gets drawn into mystery once more. But this time it’s a fearsome mystery that sneaks increasingly closer and closer to home.
The Mystery Play, a supernatural chiller of rattling cupboards, overnight séances, and spectral possessions, reveals a new definition of “mystery” – one derived from the Mystery Plays of sister Salter’s dwindling faith – in which the word can also mean a miracle beyond all logic.
Foreword
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