That Ralph’s choices worked was evident when the play received a standing ovation from an appreciative audience.

The first thing to catch the audience was the set, designed by Jim Hoskins.

“There is not one piece of this set that does not, at some time, come totally alive,” said adjudicator Donna Butt.

This was due, in part, to the exceptional light work by Miguel Doyle, who operated the lighting board as though it were top-of-the-line equipment. “I was actually quite surprised by what we could do with this equipment, and impressed,” said Doyle.

Kevin Lewis, in the role of James Tyrone, said, “That’s not comedy,” and he was right.

This was definitely a tragedy, as each family member fought his or her own battles — in most cases, unsuccessfully.

James was a failed actor who spent most of his life looking out through the bottom of a bottle.

His oldest son, Jamie, played by Cassidy Little, was following in his father’s footsteps, and spent most of the play being angry at everything and everyone.

He hated his father for being a failure, his mother for being a drug addict and his brother for having consumption.

Mary Tyrone was powerfully acted by Bev Doyle. Watching her descent into madness was fascinating, as her body language gradually changed to demonstrate this.

Even her hair, which had been in an upsweep at the start of the play, gradually fell down as the play progressed, and I am sure this was no accident.

Was she lying when she told stories or was it the morphine to which she was addicted? The audience was never sure.

The youngest son, Edmund, played by Darcy Fitzpatrick, was described as “the boy who was born from death in whom everybody in the play places their hopes.”

He was the one who — if he manages to survive consumption — has the possibility of living a normal life.

Edmund had been born after the death of his brother Eugene, and Mary Tyrone blamed her husband for his birth, saying she should never have had that child, that he was only a replacement for the dead son.

There was one character who was untouched by tragedy, and that was the maid Cathleen, played by Karen Dawe.

In her adjudication, Butt said, “Thank God for Cathleen.”

Cathleen bustled around, drinking cheerfully, unlike the family members, and remained untouched by the horror of the events.

To the audience, parts of this play were particularly poignant. Lewis has been unwell ever since he arrived in Labrador West, and had been going to the local hospital for oxygen therapy twice a day. For the performance on Friday, he was given a portable oxygen tank to keep backstage. As well, Lewis has been touched by tragedy, losing his wife and a son to respiratory disease.

When the character James yelled that his son must have gotten his disposition to consumption from his mother’s side, the audience reacted, because they knew the real-life situation.

“Sometimes art imitates life, and sometimes life imitates art,” Lewis said.

At the end of the play, the four characters were on stage together, talking, but not to each other. Each one was isolated from the others, and each one was speaking as though everyone were listening.

This was the true tragedy of this family, that they all needed to communicate, but none of them knew how.

The final show is September in the Rain, presented by the St. John’s Players, and will be followed by the awards presentation.