Photo by Tara Monatesse '25. From left to right: Olive Benito '26 as Huldey, Isaiah Woods '25 as Agatha, Gina Pasciuto '23 as The Mastiff and Jiwon Kim '26 as Marjory on stage.
By Woodlief McCabe ’23
Staff Writer
“The Moors,” directed by Mount Holyoke College’s own Nicole Tripp ’23, is a surreal dark comedy about a woman named Emilie, who travels to the English moors to become a governess for a family with a child whom she learns does not exist, and the charming man who wrote letters to hire her seemingly doesn’t either. The energetic but neglected younger sister, Huldey, grows quickly attached to Emilie. The maid, Marjory — or Mallory, her identity changes when she enters a new room — is difficult for Emilie to understand, and does not give away any information about this strange home she is in. The elder sister of the house, Agatha, the true author of the letters, weaves a tangled web of manipulation to keep Emilie in the moors.
“The Moors” begins slowly. It is evident early on that this play is a “Waiting for Godot” situation, and Master Branwell, whom Emilie is waiting to meet, will not be making an appearance and perhaps doesn’t even exist. The repetitiveness of the scenery leaves the audience feeling stuck in the moors, just as the characters are. We find the characters moving from room to identical room.
At times, Huldey reads from her diary, where she pens an entry for a new day whenever she feels a new emotion. The tension builds subtly in the first act. Something should be happening, but Emilie is the only one questioning why nothing is. It is not until the first act’s final scene that the plot truly begins to move. Agatha reveals to Emilie that Branwell is not dead, as she had dramatically revealed before, but instead is chained in the attic until he can provide Agatha with an heir. Bearing this child is Emilie’s true purpose. The energy and pace pick up considerably in the second act, where Huldey becomes the star.
Giving her all in this performance, Olive Benito ’26 was magnetic as Huldey. For a character that is pushed around, she owned the space she was in. Throughout the play, Huldey repeatedly proclaims that she is famous, and after watching her deliver a musical number, it isn’t hard to believe that she’s a star. Her voice and movement were frenetic and unrestrained, yet she was in total control of the stage and the audience. At the climax of the number, she saw the audience. We had seen her previously as a self-assured tween girl in her room, imagining herself as a starlet, but now she was truly on the stage, her fans cheering for her. It was a perfect convergence of the actor and the character.
The audience she had been performing for became a part of the show for a moment. Members of the audience began cheering and calling out to her, “You’re famous!” And then it was over. Huldey returned to the story and lost her audience.
What “The Moors” achieved was not just a play unfolding, but an experience that demanded that the audience act not just as spectators but as participants as well. We, too, are on the moors, bewildered by what is in front of us. The audience finds themselves asking questions about the home, the family, and their relationships, as well as the larger purpose of the themes and components of the play such as the musical numbers or secondary story about the Mastiff and the Moorhen. It is these questions that make us participants. The play itself is highly self-reflexive, and Tripp and her cast elevated that element beyond textual analysis and brought it to the atmosphere of the play.
The set and costumes gave the play a sense of place and time that was cohesive yet disembodied from any distinct location or time. Like the content of the play itself, the visual elements were eerie yet comical. The parts — the furniture, the styles of dress, the ways of speaking — were individually familiar, and yet the whole was unplaceable. This ability to convey an atmosphere through the set was particularly impressive, considering the only set change was the screen dropping to signify that the characters were on the moors. The interior room was decorated with strange, off-kilter paintings, one of which was of the missing master of the house, Branwell.
One standout in terms of costuming was the childish costume for Huldey. It is unclear exactly how old Huldey is, but her childlike demeanor was well-developed both by the actor and by her costume. The dress she wore for most of the play was in a typical gothic style, but the garish pattern added character to the costume that the acting fully embodied. The other costumes were also well-attuned to their characters.
Agatha was elegant yet cold, wearing a narrow dress in deep purple. Emilie wore two dresses with similar silhouettes. Both were simple but gave her a wonderful flowing movement as she walked. Her costume suited her character — warm, yet naive to the ways of the moors. There were also two non-human characters. These costumes were also designed to evoke Victorian and Gothic fashion; the Mastiff wore long mutton chops and press-on nails as claws, and the Moorhen wore a red cap and petticoats under her dress, giving her a silhouette like that of a chicken, without completely transforming her. The animal characters’ storylines were about the expression of deeply human emotions, so their human costumes with animalistic characteristics were well matched to the characters’ self-reflection.
All the actors were in touch with the material, and their chemistry was undeniable. Huldey’s dynamic with the maid, her energetic opposite, drove the second half of the play. Emilie and Agatha’s tense, neglectful lesbian romance was captivating, turning Emilie into a needy lover — Agatha’s controlling, aloof opposite.
The Mastiff and the Moorhen develop their tragic relationship slowly and deliberately. Though it is not hard to see how it will end, the actors did not betray anything. The Mastiff is destined to devour the moorhen, it is what he was made to do. Still, the characters come carefully into each other’s lives, each pushing aside the thought of how it will end between them.
The desperate Mastiff is in denial but not in control, while the Moorhen is practically-minded and still curious. Gina Pasciuto ’23’s over-communicative, emotionally frustrated Mastiff takes advantage of the Moorhen’s lack of vocabulary for her emotions, and Claire Clunis ’25 skillfully portrayed the Moorhen. She is not a fool, but she cannot compete intellectually when she does not have the words for “happy.” The two of them grew toxicity out of nurture in the moors. This story, though independent of the story in the house, was compelling and tragic.
“The Moors” was easily some of the best theater I have seen in my four years at Mount Holyoke. The care and attention that was given to the work were evident. It is one thing to watch a play with talented performers, director and crew. It is another thing to see a play like this one, where it is so clear that those involved loved what they were doing, and poured their hearts into their art.