Marion Bridge.

Virginia Gillham is Associate Librarian in the Public Service Library at
the University of Guelph.

Daniel MacIvor has written two versions of Marion Bridge, a stage play and a screenplay. Both are provided in this volume.

The same themes run through both versions, and the general outline of the plot is similar; however, there are dramatic differences between the two, the need for which is sometimes difficult to understand, even having read the author’s explanatory preface.

MacIvor long harboured a wish to write an excellent screenplay; however, his understanding of himself and his writing style caused him to realize that he probably could not do so successfully if he began with a screenplay as his goal. As a result, he determined to write a stage play and then evolve it into a screenplay. It is interesting to contemplate the differences between the two, and to speculate on which are truly demanded by the medium and which are intended to appeal to the presumably differing tastes of movie audiences.

Three unmarried sisters in their 30s have come home to Cape Breton to care for their mother in her last days. Their characters and personalities are dramatically different, but both plots turn on the concept of family dynamics. MacIvor indicates that the stage play has been the more enduring and successful. Few readers of both would find that surprising.

The stage play focuses on the various conflicts among the sisters, their dramatically different personalities and lifestyles, their shared resentment of their estranged father, and the enduring bitterness of the eldest sister as the result of having been forced to give up her daughter born out of wedlock.

All of these elements are also present in the screenplay, but they are less central to the unfolding of the plot. The additional complication introduced in the screenplay is incest and its enduring impact on all of the family members.

The reader who examines both versions of Marion Bridge must definitely read the foreword for an explanation of the evolution of the two different works. MacIvor evolves character and personality brilliantly, and his handling of drama is spare, understated, realistic, and compelling.

This title is worth acquiring both for the excellent drama provided—in particular, by the stage play—and for the interesting insight it provides into the apparently differing demands of the two formats.