Chapter Text
*Please note that, unless otherwise stated, names refer to the onstage depictions rather than any real-life persons the characters were based upon (where applicable).*
Watching any play by the infamous playwright Ange-Dominique Flanders de Arte is, more often than not, akin to watching a two and a half hours long religious tract. This is no different for their most recent play, Change in a Time of Stagnancy, which acts as Flanders de Arte’s take on the Saviors of Vaugardes’ journey, save for how the heavy, overpowering, overbearing presence of the Change belief in the work is to the point that it is actually surprising Flanders de Arte is a Vaugardian native, rather than a foreigner whose only knowledge of our fair country prior to writing the play was that the most common religion practiced here is the Change belief, and who thought the best way to ensure the audience knew the play was based in Vaugarde—as if the event depicted were not enough—was to mention some aspect of the religion every two lines.
From the moment the curtains open, Mirabelle’s sole character quality seems to be “paragon of what it means to be a Housemaiden,” as the first words uttered on stage are by a traveler extolling her virtues and praising how she was able to help them “embrace Change” and “understand the world around them through Its lens”—to the point where the traveler begins outlining future plans to bring such knowledge and understanding to a non-believer they knew prior to their Change before they are abruptly Frozen in time by the King’s curse.
The preachiness only continues as the rest of the Saviors slowly assemble through Act I:
Isabeau fears the unknown in comparison to the comfortable routine of being a Defender before Mirabelle’s speech to the wider Defenders of Jouvente convinces him to embrace the unknown and savor the unexpected Changes as they come.
Odile, while claiming to refuse abandoning her Ka Buan beliefs, finds herself “intrigued” by Mirabelle’s passion and determination and vows to join the quest to save the country "for research purposes.”
Boniface represents the youth of the country and the natural Changes that come with growing up—asking the hard questions such as “why do bad things happen?” all so Mirabelle can explain how “even the sad and hurtful things should be celebrated, as the nature of Change means all things are impermanent" and “this, too, shall pass” and in the future become a memory “to look back on in, if not fondness, then at the very least gratitude for helping lay the foundation for the Changes that came after.”
The outlier to this trend would appear to be Siffrin, who, as in the case of their real-life counterpart, joined the group before Boniface, but whose motivations and thoughts on Change are not explored.
At least, not until Act II, where they become one of the primary focuses and driving point for the plot.
Act I ends with the Saviors arriving in Dormont and seeing the Frozen traveler from the first scene. Everyone has mixed emotions and expressions upon seeing their state, with Siffrin seeming to take it the hardest. He goes far as to examine them physically before rushing offstage in apparent distress, with the others rapidly following behind, attempting to gain insight into their distraught state, before the curtains close and signal the beginning of the intermission.
Act II consists of a jumble of scenes which can, at their most generous, be described as a series of pep talks directed toward Mirabelle. The group, apparently, had not been able to catch up with Siffrin after they fled before the intermission and so decided split up in search of him. Mirabelle manages to come across each party member individually during this search, apparently blaming herself for Siffrin’s state of mind due to “failing to be a proper Housemaiden,” and upon seeing her like this, each takes the chance to reassure her. This takes place via a recapping their own personal Change journeys—even Odile who still, at least on the surface, claims not to be a believer—and how she was their main inspiration and driving force. They then take a moment to speculate over what could be bothering Siffrin.
By the time Mirabelle finally finds them again, Siffrin is back by the Frozen traveler—where he admits that the two of them are actually estranged siblings. The Frozen traveler is, in fact, Loop, and the estrangement happened due to the Change belief. Siffrin, much like Isabeau, wished to keep to a prior status quo—in this case, traveling around with Loop. Loop, however, wished to embrace a Change and settle down more permanently—at least for a while. Because of this, Siffrin spent quite a while resenting the Change belief… at least until seeing how horrible stagnancy really was as the country began Freezing around him, which is why they joined the rest of the Saviors. Still, the shock of seeing their Frozen sibling momentarily caused their courage fail and caused him to question everything he’d come to learn from Mirabelle about the Change belief—after all, being a believer hadn’t saved Loop, in the end.
But Mirabelle echoes earlier sentiments given to Boniface about the idea of impermanence and what Change really means, and the things she herself has learned while on this journey. The group comes together for an obligatory group hug before walking offstage to confront the King—a confrontation which is never actually shown, other than in vague shadows on the backdrop—and Loop is freed from their Frozen state so they can finish expounding upon the plans they had been cut off from explaining mid-sentence: that now that they view the world through the lens of Change, they see that they and their estranged sibling had been following the belief all along, without even knowing it. By traveling from place to place they were in a state of constant Change. “Change existed even within a time of stagnancy.”
At this point, a joyful-sounding Siffrin exclaims—starting from offstage but getting louder as they rush on to embrace Loop—that working towards a concrete goal, for once, can be Change too. “Staying in one place after spending so long aimless is Change as well.”
“Just so long as you keep open to future possibilities and changes,” Mirabelle chimes in, ending off the play with “Something the King of Stagnancy could never realize.”
Again, an overly preachy sermon to a choir already bored to tears, and a grievous offense to basically all other religions and their practitioners—which is triply galling considering that half the real-life Saviors are not native to Vaugarde, have never once claimed to follow the Change belief, and, on many occasions, have mentioned following wholly different beliefs. Yet Flanders de Arte only acknowledges this fact so they can use it to introduce the idea of religious conversion: that one of the ultimate Changes a person can undergo is Changing their religious beliefs, denouncing their culture to embrace Change in its “fullest” form.
Which, ironically, goes against the main message of the play. For isn’t a monoculture, where everyone believes the same faith, denouncing all others to embrace Change and Change alone, in itself a form of Stagnancy?
The plot aside, I do have to give highest praise to the actors and staging. Despite the abysmal writing and dialogue they were given to work with, the actors themselves were phenomenal. Odile’s actor had a superb Ka Buan accent thanks to their fluent grasp of the actual language, and the young actor playing Boniface brought me to tears during their big speech in Act II where they assured Mirabelle that her mistakes were, in fact, what made her such a great Housemaiden to begin with as it proved she was always in a constant state of learning and changing. Loop’s actor, too, must be applauded for giving such a realistic depiction of what it was like to be Frozen despite, unlike so many others, myself included, never having actually fallen victim to the curse—they were visiting family abroad at the time.
The special effects, too, are among the best I have ever seen. During Loop’s initial Freezing scene, there is a moment where a Change God statue appears to break—early signs of the curse hitting Dormont—and then fix itself—indicative of the moment where Mirabelle receives her blessing from the Change God—without any noticeable involvement by the actors onstage. The depiction of shadows, too, is done without any hint of “shadow puppetry” or wires, and the use of background noises makes it all the more evident when the Saviors are in an area where the curse is in effect. The noises abruptly cutting out like they did filled the atmosphere with an eerie, pervasive quiet and sense of wrongness.
However, these upsides cannot cancel out the quality of the writing itself, meaning that my ultimate score for Change in a Time of Stagnancy is:
1.5 / 5 Flower Petals.
And that is me being generous.