Local talent brushes up Irish brogue

It can be daunting to step under the spotlight after 10 years behind the scenes.

And yes, Betty Moulton is feeling a jolt of trepidation as she prepares for The Cripple of Inishmaan opening Thursday at the Timms Centre for a 10-day run.

But mostly there's excitement, a jumping-out-of-the-skin feeling of going back to a place of comfort and personal fulfilment.

“It was time I practised what I preached,” chuckles Moulton, a bachelor of fine arts voice, speech and text instructor for the University of Alberta's drama department.

Moulton lived in St. Albert for 19 years and raised a son, Jeff, also an actor, before moving into Edmonton two years ago for an easier commute.

As a thespian of numerous classics, Moulton has acted in roles from A Midsummer Night's Dream and Hedda Gabbler to The House of Bernarda Alba and Winnie the Pooh.

And just this season, she loaned her vocal coaching skills to Catalyst Theatre's Hunchback and Citadel Theatre's Three Musketeers and Little Women.

Directed by master's student Mitchell Cushman as a thesis project, The Cripple of Inishmaan delivers a dark, yet comic tale in the grand tradition of Irish storytelling.

Playwright Martin McDonagh (Queen of Leenae) sets it in one of the remote Aran Islands. On this desolate rock its meagre, poverty-stricken inhabitants feel trapped between the sky and the sea.

Word arrives on Inishmaan that Hollywood director Robert Flaherty has come to film a movie, and in this rumour-starved community the tongues start wagging double time.

No one wants to be in films more than Cripple Billy, an unloved boy raised by two caregiver aunts after he was orphaned. Determined to escape the gossip, poverty, boredom and cruelty, he crosses the sea to audition for the Yanks. And strangely enough, it is his heartbreaking odyssey that so profoundly affects the community.

Moulton is Aunt Kate, the softer, more maternal aunt who goes to pieces when Billy leaves. His departure is a moment of great upheaval for her and she loses her sense of purpose.

“It's really important to look at how families who have a brother, sister or child not living close by and what it does to a person — how you form your identity around them, how you take the role to heart and can't function when they're not there.”

As Kate falls into a downward spiral, she starts talking to stones. “I think she's a woman with an obsession. It doesn't undo her, but it does cripple her.”

For the role, Moulton logged on to YouTube listening to original dialects and practiced knitting for her debut.

One thing Moulton does have in common with Kate is a love of collecting stones. “It's a piece of the earth. It's primal. It grounds you literally. It reminds me where I've been.”

Also in this nine-actor production is St. Albert actress Sarah Sharkey, in the role of Helen McCormick, a tough girl Billy has a crush on.