“Sea Marks” a long distance love story at Shakespeare & Company

Set in the late 1960s, Sea Marks is a love story that predates email, cell phones, and Match.com; it’s a world of slow mail and slow courtship. But as with all love stories, Sea Marks shows how completely a life, or two lives, can change in an instant:  in this case the instant when Colm Primrose, a fisherman on one of Ireland’s western  islands, decides to write a letter to Timothea Stiles, a woman he saw briefly, once, at a wedding. and things develop.

Returning to Shakespeare & Company is critically acclaimed director Daniela Varon who brings Gardner McKay’s sweeping love story Sea Marks to life at the Bernstein Theatre.  The “two-hander” features actors Kristin Wold and Walton Wilson.

The young lady, Timothea, is a native of Wales, but she has traded in life on a farm for life in the big city of Liverpool.   More than the Irish Sea separates these middle-aged would-be lovers, and this play follows the unlikely couple’s quest to find common ground.  In a surprising twist, Colm’s letters become more than a means of communication when Timothea decides to show them to her employer, a publisher.  For anyone who’s ever thought the chance for love has passed, comes this sea-swept tale of an unlikely romance springing up at an unlikely moment.

“Colm and Timothea’s letters take from a week to a month to travel,” says Varon.  “There isn’t a single telephone on Colm’s island or any electricity except for the one generator at the one pub; and even in Liverpool, Timothea’s apartment doesn’t have a phone. This was only 40 years ago, but it’s a time that to many of the Tweeting, Twittering, IM-ing, I-Phoning young people in our lives seems as remote as the Elizabethan age.”

Upon its premiere in 1971, the Washington Post called this enchanting two-hander “a sweet little love story.” But that overly simplifies things. Sea Marks is a quiet, charming story filled with the yearning for redemption and the fragility of change.

Directed by S&Co. veteran Daniela Varon (director of such favorites as Martha Mitchell Calling, The Taming of the Shrew, Love Letters, Much Ado About Nothing, Wit, The Winter’s Tale and many others) and featuring the expert work of longtime Company actors Walton Wilson (Othello, The Ladies Man, Antony and Cleopatra) and Kristin Wold (Othello, Ice Glen, King Lear), Sea Marks offers a poignant journey into a place where the unknown is somehow familiar, and the lapping of the waves never ceases.

“Now, when thought travels so quickly and everything seems instantly available, I’m drawn to this play about people who live with anticipation, yearning, and longing, and for whom the hand-written and hand-carried word has the power to bridge oceans and change lives,” says Varon.  “Walton, Kristin and I all came to Shakespeare & Company as young actors more than twenty years ago, and it’s such a joy to work together on this play that celebrates the possibilities of falling deeply, passionately, surprisingly in love in middle-age, or at any age.”

Gardner McKay was an actor, playwright, critic, photographer, and sculptor who appeared in more than 100 films for television in the 1960s. In addition to Sea Marks, plays include Toyer, In Order of Appearance and Masters of the Sea.

This is long-time Company member and Director Daniela Varon’s seventeenth season with S&Co. where she has directed many productions including the award-winning Martha Mitchell Calling, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, Love Letters, Collected Stories, The Winter’s Tale, Wit, A Room of One’s Own, and Turn of the Screw. Daniela recently directed the NY premiere of Robert Brustein’s The English Channel at the Abingdon Theatre. Other NY credits include Blue Heron, Culture Project, EST, HERE, Joe’s Pub, Lincoln Center Theater Directors’ Lab, Mud/Bone, the Public, 78th Street Theatre Lab, T.W.E.E.D., Vineyard Theatre.

Regional: Boston Playwrights’ Theatre, Connecticut Repertory, LA Women’s Shakespeare, North Country Center for the Arts, The Poets’ Theatre, Sun Valley Shakespeare, Tygre’s Heart Shakespeare, Vineyard Playhouse. New play development: A.R.T., Cherry Lane, ACT Seattle, Crossroads, Hartford Stage, Immigrant Theater Project, National New Play Network, New Dramatists, New Georges, Performance Network, Playwrights Horizons, the Public, Transport Group, Voice & Vision. Daniela is co-creator of Conversations with Shakespeare, presented at Symphony Space and in development for public radio.

She has also taught and directed at numerous colleges, conservatories and actor training programs. Faculty, Lincoln Center Open Stages; founding faculty, Linklater Center; co-founder, The Company of Women; Drama League Fellow; NYTW Usual Suspect.

Walton Wilson marks his twelfth season at S&Co. playing Colm in Sea Marks. Other S&Co. selected credits include, The Ladies’ Man, Othello, Antony & Cleopatra, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Taming of the Shrew, King John, Twelfth Night, Henry IV part 1, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Comedy of Errors. New York: BAM, Culture Project, La Mama, Public/NYSF, etc. Regional: Actors Theatre of Louisville, Alley Theatre, ART, Dallas Theatre Center, Empty Space, Stages, Swine Palace, Williamstown, Yale Rep, and Faculty, Yale School of Drama.

Kristin Wold plays Timothea Stiles in Sea Marks in her twenty-first season with S&Co. where she will be part of the faculty for the Company’s Summer Training. S&Co. selected credits include, Othello (Emilia), Ice Glen (Sarah), King Lear (Cordelia), The Tempest (Ariel), Twelfth Night (Viola), Measure for Measure (Isabella), Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), Berkeley Square (Helen), Midsummer (Hermia),and Much Ado About Nothing (Hero). This fall Kristin will be directing The Last Days of Judas Iscariot for Connecticut Repertory Theatre. Kristin teaches acting and movement for S&Co. and at the University of Connecticut.