A friend reaches across to hold my hand at the end of Downed Hearts at Ship’s Company Theatre and we nod and smile at one another, tears in our eyes, because Downed Hearts is a very good play and it has touched us very deeply.

The two-hour drama, premiering at Ship’s through Aug. 27, is a heartrending, uplifting tale of love and loss and survival. It is so compelling and involving it’s hard to break focus at intermission and at the end.

Two-time Governor General’s award-winning, Sambro playwright Catherine Banks explores the after-effects of the crash of Swissair Flight 111 25 years ago on an island community whose fishermen leapt into their boats to rescue survivors – and then assist in recovery operations – after hearing the burning plane roar overhead. (This is exactly what the fishermen of the Blandford and Peggys Cove area did and for those who remember the disaster, which killed all 229 passengers aboard, several details ring true.)

This excellent production – a perfect union of casting, design and direction – opens with the plane’s roar. Projections of water bathe the kitchen set as a troubled fisherman awakes from a bad dream. Aaron – in a remarkably nuanced, intense and moving performance by Zach Faye – has been traumatized by three days of crash-site recovery. He is absolutely unwilling to talk about it or get counselling.

The play is set in Aaron’s house a few days after the disaster with helicopters still thundering overhead. His mother Pearl, a plain-talking, bread-baking, salt-of-the-earth type wonderfully and lovingly portrayed by Halifax favourite Sherry Smith, is staying with Aaron to care for his autistic son Lucas. Aaron’s wife Amanda is fulfilling a lifelong dream to study theatre in Halifax, while Pearl’s friend Percy (Martha Irving), a lonely, come-from-away artist, is collecting crash-related debris off the beach and working on a ceramic memorial to the 229 lost.

When Aaron finds a young woman on an abandoned island wrapped in an airline blanket, he brings her home – much to Pearl’s disapproval. Lucas, who is Aaron’s autistic son, immediately takes to the mute woman and her mysterious presence somehow helps Aaron cope.

Throw in the theme of art-making as a way to process tragedy and heal, and that’s a lot of threads. But these threads all connect thematically in a powerful way as Banks tells a complex, excellently plotted story of a shattered community using both a poetic and a naturalistic structure.

Director Samantha Wilson keeps both styles clear and balanced with an excellent cast and design team. Pearl’s kitchen is solidly real with fresh-baked bread, a jar of molasses and tea on the go. The way Pearl wraps lunch box sandwiches in wax paper is exactly the way it was done.

This show also features an amazing, authentic performance of great physicality, high energy and compelling warmth by Elm Reyes, a Toronto AuDHD performer, as Lucas. All the performances are strong including those of Ursula Calder as Belle, sweetly engaging and present in spite of not speaking, and Glenda Braganza as Amanda, an initially cold character who becomes warmly empathetic. Martha Irving brings all her years of experience to bear on Percy making for wonderful kitchen chats with Pearl.

The sound design by composer Jackson Fairfax-Perry adds a lot of drama and mood as does Alison Crosby’s lighting design and MacKenzie Cornfield’s projections. Set and props designer Sue LePage creates a two-tier set with Aaron’s highly-detailed, realistic kitchen below and Percy’s studio above; it is difficult to see the objects and furnishings of Percy’s studio but the actors are visible. Krista Levy Odlin’s costumes are authentic and in browns and blues which suit the story and match the watery projections.

Some suspension of disbelief is required and there may be one too many threads but that doesn’t take away from the power of the play.

The day after seeing it – the play still strongly thrumming in my head and heart – I stood on the black sand beach at Advocate Harbour and thought of all of Nova Scotia’s recent disasters and their long-lasting impacts on communities – the Westray Mine Disaster in 1992, the Swissair disaster in 1998, the mass shootings in Portaupique on the very same shore in 2020 and the loss of four people in this July’s floods across the Minas Basin from Advocate.

And staring out to sea I saw the same diamond, glittering water that in Downed Hearts gives Aaron such joy and optimism for life.

The play runs Wednesday through Saturday at 7.30 p.m. with matinees Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $15, youth, $30 seniors and $35, adult at Downed Hearts – Ship’s Company Theatre – Parrsboro – Aug 19, 2023 | Showpass

It took four years to get Downed Hearts to the stage in a co-production by Ship’s Company Theatre and Dartmouth’s Eastern Front Theatre in association with Matchstick Theatre. Mary Vingoe, co-founder of Ship’s Company with Michael Fuller in 1984, was the dramaturge for Downed Hearts and her daughter Laura Vingoe-Cram is celebrating her first season as the theatre’s new artistic director.

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