Ship’s Co. mines spirit of Springhill
by Andrew Wagstaff, The Amherst Citizen1958 Bump brought to stage with class, 50 years after world famous disaster
Lee J. Campbell (left) is Percy Rector and Bruce Tubbe is Maurice Ruddick in Ship’s Company Theatre’s production of Bump, a retelling of the 1958 Springhill mine disaster. The show runs until July 27.
There are more than 17 definitions for the word “bump.”
The word is perhaps used most to describe “the shock of a blow or collision,” much like the blow to the Town of Springhill on Oct. 23, 1958, when the famous Springhill Bump took the lives of 74 miners and trapped 100 more, and crippled the town’s main industry.
Another definition of the word is to “transfer to a higher or lower level,” which is exactly what happened in the wake of the Springhill Bump, as 19 men rose above adversity to survive underground for as long as nine days while another group of brave men came to their rescue.
Ship’s Company Theatre also rose to a high level last Friday night, when it staged its production of Bump, a play by Richard Merrill, documenting the story of courage and survival by the group of men trapped at the 13,000-foot level.
Directed by Michael Chiasson, the play is a dramatic retelling of the disaster, from the points of view of trapped miners Maurice “The Singing Miner” Ruddick (Bruce Tubbe), Frank Hunter (Matthew Walker Stephenson) and Percy Rector (Lee J. Campbell), and from the point of view of Norma Ruddick (Julia Williams), one of the many wives who waited and prayed above ground.
No play could ever recapture the hell those men went through in those nine days, or what their families went through above, but this one comes as close as one could imagine. With high production values including top-notch sound, set and lighting design - the work of Michael Doherty, Katherine Jenkins and Bruce MacLennan, respectively - Bump makes the best use yet of the new theatre facility. A show of this magnitude likely could not have been pulled off under the tent on the old Kip.
As modern-day Norma sits and listens to CBC radio coverage of the Pennsylvania mine rescue of 2002, she is taken back to her experience of 1958, and we as an audience are taken with her. Suddenly the radio is playing Perry Como, and we feel the bump, just as people felt it as far as 15 miles away on that day.
Behind Norma is a “hole in the ground” set piece where we see the miners deal with the situation. Young Frank is frightened and stunned into silence, while veteran miner Percy, who has his arm pinned under the shaft’s crumpled framework, howls with pain at one moment and fires off sarcastic one-liners the next.
Maurice is the leader of the group, helping them keep their wits with his songs, his words of hope, and his undying faith, in the tiny pocket of the collapsed mine, the deepest coal mine in the world.
“The Lord gave us this pocket,” he tells Percy. “We are blessed.”
But even Maurice has his moments of vulnerability and doubt, portrayed in a dynamic performance from Tubbe. In one powerful moment, after several days without rescue, he struggles to remember the names of his 12 children, and wonders aloud if his wife will remarry.
Meanwhile, Norma finds the strength to believe her husband is alive, long after he and the other trapped miners have been written off by the national news media and mine manager Frank Gordon. She stops watching news reports after the first few days, and refuses to attend the funeral services for those who died.
“I only have one black dress, and I’m saving it,” she said.
Williams carries a tremendous load as the Ruddick matriarch, who is still alive and well in Springhill, and was in attendance with other family members at the opening night show. The young actress switches between the Norma of 2002 and the Norma of 1958 effortlessly, and somehow delivering the lengthy exposition necessary to further the story, while also packing tremendous dramatic punch into her scenes without the help of the other actors.
In one scene she prays her husband is on a list of survivors announced on the radio, and in the next instant prays he is not on the list of confirmed dead announced in the same broadcast,, demonstrating the emotional upheaval during the wait.
“Even if you don’t believe, pray anyway,” she advises the wives of the Pennsylvania miners.
Bump is a long play - the first half runs for nearly 90 minutes - but it flies by with expertly timed scene cuts, marking a triumph for Chiasson and his design team, and thanks to slew of strong performances from a very capable cast.
As has been the case in the past, Ship’s Company shows are at their best when they tell the stories of real people, and there is nothing more real in Cumberland County than the story of the Springhill mine disasters. Bump ranks among the top shows in the company’s 24-year history.
But, more importantly, the play is an important retelling of the survival of Springhill, which Blood on the Coal author Roger Brown described as “the town that would not die.” The wounds of 1956 and 1958 have never completely healed in the former mining town, but its courage and fighting spirit continue to run deep - deeper than any coal mine.
