TORONTO - It's just one of the things that art gives us -- an ability to see beyond the ordinary in our everyday lives and grasp the extraordinary at its heart.

Certainly, on the surface of things, there would be little in the life of the late Myra Bennett (nee Grimsley) that she would have considered terribly far beyond the ordinary.

Born and trained as a nurse in England, Bennett arrived on Newfoundland's Northern Peninsula in 1921 to serve an isolated outport community that stretched over 320 km of rugged shoreline.

Quickly establishing herself as a no-nonsense type of woman, she settled into a community that at first looked askance at her London airs. Slowly and resolutely, she made it her home.

Over time, she married a local man, bore three children, fostered four more, and continued to serve as the local midwife, dentist, bonesetter and health purveyor. She would be plucked occasionally from obscurity to be recognized for her contributions, but always she returned to the Newfoundland community she now called home. And it was there she died in 1990 at age 100.

By then, she was largely forgotten by the broader world until her story was taken up by playwright Robert Chafe and Theatre Newfoundland Labrador who, with the help of director Jillian Keiley and a tight four-actor ensemble, transformed it into a lovely and touching piece of folk art called Tempting Providence.

As the latest chapter in what has become an international success story, Tempting Providence has taken up residence at the Factory Theatre, where it opened Thursday for a run that concludes April 22.

Fittingly, considering its subject, it is a simple, no-nonsense production, with four white-clad actors in more or less constant motion on a set comprising only of a table and four chairs, painted a deep earthy red and placed on a square of carpet at centre stage.

The story itself is told in flashback, with Darryl Hopkins stepping easily and unobtrusively into the role of narrator and host, cast as Bennett's husband Angus and imbuing the tale of the prickly Myra (flawlessly played Deidre Gillard-Rowlings) with a loving and forgiving tolerance.

They are joined by Melanie Caines, who tackles a multitude of supporting female characters with an impressive and often comic zeal, and Robert Wyatt Thorne who does the same for the menfolk.

In less than 90 minutes, with a tablecloth that almost magically transforms itself from a baby to a wedding dress to a rowboat as their only prop, they tell Myra's story. Along the way, they slowly and inexorably bring to life the entire stretch of Newfoundland shoreline she came to call home, including the people she learned to love in a lifetime of service to them.

As they move through Bennett's life, as re-created by playwright Chafe, they use director Keiley's almost choreographic direction as a lifeline.

They transform this little bit of theatre into a beautifully crafted artwork that speaks to an entire nation built by people such as Bennett, who by her own admission could have as easily ended up in Saskatchewan as Newfoundland -- and who, no doubt, would have enjoyed a very similar life there.

It is that simple fact, perhaps, that transforms this from a piece of Newfoundland theatre to one with such scope that it speaks to all of Canada.

We are all part of a nation, after all, built by people who found themselves in less than hospitable circumstances, looked around and did what had to be done -- simply because, as Myra says, "It was the sensible thing to do."

Tempting Providence reminds us not only that they were here, but that they are still among us, masquerading as ordinary people.
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