by Keith Barker
Directed by Andrea Emmerton and Walter Maskel
Presented by Gore Bay Theatre
representing the QUONTA Drama Region (Northeastern Ontario)
For the second night in a row, the audience at the Theatre Ontario Festival has witnessed a Canadian play dealing with the fallout from suicide. It's been a devastating experience for those of us who've actually had to travel that road, and that's putting it mildly. Dark as they are, though, these plays are also strongly life-affirming, and both theatre companies producing them found that affirmation. Without that positive power, the experience would have been far bleaker.
Despite the commonality of theme, I was much more struck by the way in which these two playwrights have explored complementary aspects of grieving for a suicide. Between the two plays, we've experienced a wide range of actions and reactions which different people can encounter as they deal with such a tragic death.
Despite the commonality of theme, I was much more struck by the way in which these two playwrights have explored complementary aspects of grieving for a suicide. Between the two plays, we've experienced a wide range of actions and reactions which different people can encounter as they deal with such a tragic death.
Keith Barker's script is very different in form and structure from Jordan Tannahill's play which we saw on Wednesday night. Setting and characters bring us to a different world -- the rural, forest environment of Northern Ontario instead of the urban sophistication of Ottawa. But the real difference lies in the construction of Barker's play, which leaps backwards and forwards in time across a period of a year. Instead of the continuous flow of action in real time which we got on Wednesday, this piece is an assemblage of vignettes, some brief, some extended, but none lasting for more than a few minutes.
The success of a play like this depends -- like a good murder mystery -- on providing the audience just enough information to keep them engaged in the mystery without giving too much away too quickly. That "just enough" is a tricky, loaded phrase, but can be taken to mean that there has to be enough detail to engage the audience in the story and to keep them engaged until all the pieces have unfolded and the full picture can be seen in retrospect. This kind of script creates major challenges for the offstage departments as well as for the actors.
The success of a play like this depends -- like a good murder mystery -- on providing the audience just enough information to keep them engaged in the mystery without giving too much away too quickly. That "just enough" is a tricky, loaded phrase, but can be taken to mean that there has to be enough detail to engage the audience in the story and to keep them engaged until all the pieces have unfolded and the full picture can be seen in retrospect. This kind of script creates major challenges for the offstage departments as well as for the actors.
The highly stylized visual and audio elements of this production are familiar indeed to those who've witnessed the previous work of co-directors Emmerton and Maskel over the years. Scenes are introduced and linked with multi-coloured light effects against a cyclorama backdrop. These light effects are accompanied by gentle background music composed and performed by Vern Dorge. The stage set is crafted out of skeletal shapes and forms, some standing, some suspended in front of the cyclorama.
Those stage set shapes, in this case, were plainly trees, but equally plainly constructed. Neither meant nor designed to look natural, they resembled evergreen trees drawn by a young child with a broad paint brush. Placement on the stage allowed the actors to move freely between and among the trees in the forest scenes, while there was ample room in front of the forest for scenes in other places (a home, a garden) to be played out. This evocative setting worked beautifully for the piece.
On the other hand, I found the convention of bridging between the scenes hindered the flow of this play at times. We simply spent too much time watching coloured lights while figures in shadow moved off, followed by others moving on, always at a moderate pace as dictated by the one ruminative musical selection which was played at nearly every scene change. This type of evocative and thoughtful transition worked best with the shifts in and out of the fox's story. But I definitely felt that the briefer scenes among the characters would be better served by having actors for the upcoming scene enter at, say, stage right while the actors of the preceding scene were still making their exit at stage left. A transition like this could also be done without music, and could therefore move at a brisker speed. This would keep the play as a whole flowing more smoothly and integrally, without continual drops in the dramatic temperature which we experienced.
The choppiness which this stylized scene change model forced on the script was unfortunate, because the pacing and timing within each scene was admirable. So was the sense of commitment and teamwork among the four actors.
Each of the four gets a chance to step to the front of the stage at some point in the play to recite part of the story of a fox who was himself a storyteller. In the end, we learn that this tale came from a childhood book which Lucille and Paul read so often to Craig that the book finally fell apart. These four storytelling sequences gave each actor a chance to create a different atmosphere by stepping out of self-character to become self-as-storyteller. It's almost inevitable that anyone telling a story to a small child will adopt a different voice from their normal, everyday speech -- and equally inevitable that some will show bigger differences than others. The four actors all varied their speech, but in different degrees, which lent an important air of realism to their storytelling.
Each also presented a character with varying strengths.
Tara Bernatchez created a compelling portrait of Lucille, the mother of the dead Craig. In her first scene she sat, rigid of face and body, frozen into an immobile block by the emotions which she could not allow herself to release. As the play progressed, subsequent scenes showed her gradually opening up ever so little, until the scene in which she finally snapped wide open, screaming that these were her feelings and nobody else got to tell her how to feel. That moment of self-admission finally set her on the road of true grieving, a whole year after her son's death.
A key element in her story is the relationship between her and the fox which loiters consistently just outside the imaginary limits of the garden where she so often sits. For several scenes she treasured an egg which the fox had brought to her, because of her certainty that the fox was the spirit of Craig returning to comfort her. In an intriguing reversal of the expected symbolism, it was the breaking of the egg (traditional symbol of new life and new birth) which allowed her to continue her journey towards recovery of herself. In all of her scenes, Bernatchez made effective use of multiple shades of vocal tone in projecting her tides of conflicted feeling.
Her older sister, Liset, was played by Shannon McMullan, who similarly made good use of a strong and flexible voice to great effect. She had some of the funniest moments of the play, as she conversed with the invisible fox -- her expressive face adding spice to her threats and comments to the animal. Once or twice I felt that her physicality in the sequences where she was speaking to the fox became a little too "stagey" to seem truthful. Liset was the character who tried hardest to "move on," and thus displayed the most impatience with Lucille who approached the tragedy from the diametric point of refusing to move on at all. McMullan certainly captured that impatience.
Liset's husband, Jim, was brought to life by Will Smith. If the phrase "good ole boy" can be applied to a man from northern Ontario (rather than from the Deep South of the USA) then it certainly would describe Jim. Bluff, hearty, certainly neither subtle nor particular aware of the feelings of others, Jim remained likable because of his good intentions. If all this sounds suspiciously like caricature, his key scene near the end of the play dispelled that belief. Smith's performance of the heart-rending monologue where he describes Craig's death by hanging was the biggest emotional knockout punch of the evening. All the heartiness fell away and exposed the naked pain underneath. Smith's timing and pacing were perfected at the moment when Jim told Paul that Craig did what he did so that the father he loved wouldn't be the one to find him after his death.
As Paul, Craig's father, John Robertson handled well the bewilderment which was one of his key emotions. What emerged clearly, in face and voice, was a strong sense of caring and love towards his son, combined with an equally strong inability to comprehend that Craig was and would have remained an entirely different kind of person from himself -- quieter, more sensitive, less stereotypically manly. His silent but complex reactions to Jim's final revelation were powerfully compelling and entirely believable.
Robertson touched a deep core of truth in the final scene where he discovered Lucille in the forest, and the two gently and quietly reconciled. And I did feel, from the tone of both actors in this scene, that their reconciliation would last. I truly wished that for them.
If there's an acid test for a performance of a play like this, it surely resides in the need for the audience to feel invested in the characters and their fates -- and this company passed the test with flying colours.
Each of the four gets a chance to step to the front of the stage at some point in the play to recite part of the story of a fox who was himself a storyteller. In the end, we learn that this tale came from a childhood book which Lucille and Paul read so often to Craig that the book finally fell apart. These four storytelling sequences gave each actor a chance to create a different atmosphere by stepping out of self-character to become self-as-storyteller. It's almost inevitable that anyone telling a story to a small child will adopt a different voice from their normal, everyday speech -- and equally inevitable that some will show bigger differences than others. The four actors all varied their speech, but in different degrees, which lent an important air of realism to their storytelling.
Each also presented a character with varying strengths.
Tara Bernatchez created a compelling portrait of Lucille, the mother of the dead Craig. In her first scene she sat, rigid of face and body, frozen into an immobile block by the emotions which she could not allow herself to release. As the play progressed, subsequent scenes showed her gradually opening up ever so little, until the scene in which she finally snapped wide open, screaming that these were her feelings and nobody else got to tell her how to feel. That moment of self-admission finally set her on the road of true grieving, a whole year after her son's death.
A key element in her story is the relationship between her and the fox which loiters consistently just outside the imaginary limits of the garden where she so often sits. For several scenes she treasured an egg which the fox had brought to her, because of her certainty that the fox was the spirit of Craig returning to comfort her. In an intriguing reversal of the expected symbolism, it was the breaking of the egg (traditional symbol of new life and new birth) which allowed her to continue her journey towards recovery of herself. In all of her scenes, Bernatchez made effective use of multiple shades of vocal tone in projecting her tides of conflicted feeling.
Her older sister, Liset, was played by Shannon McMullan, who similarly made good use of a strong and flexible voice to great effect. She had some of the funniest moments of the play, as she conversed with the invisible fox -- her expressive face adding spice to her threats and comments to the animal. Once or twice I felt that her physicality in the sequences where she was speaking to the fox became a little too "stagey" to seem truthful. Liset was the character who tried hardest to "move on," and thus displayed the most impatience with Lucille who approached the tragedy from the diametric point of refusing to move on at all. McMullan certainly captured that impatience.
Liset's husband, Jim, was brought to life by Will Smith. If the phrase "good ole boy" can be applied to a man from northern Ontario (rather than from the Deep South of the USA) then it certainly would describe Jim. Bluff, hearty, certainly neither subtle nor particular aware of the feelings of others, Jim remained likable because of his good intentions. If all this sounds suspiciously like caricature, his key scene near the end of the play dispelled that belief. Smith's performance of the heart-rending monologue where he describes Craig's death by hanging was the biggest emotional knockout punch of the evening. All the heartiness fell away and exposed the naked pain underneath. Smith's timing and pacing were perfected at the moment when Jim told Paul that Craig did what he did so that the father he loved wouldn't be the one to find him after his death.
As Paul, Craig's father, John Robertson handled well the bewilderment which was one of his key emotions. What emerged clearly, in face and voice, was a strong sense of caring and love towards his son, combined with an equally strong inability to comprehend that Craig was and would have remained an entirely different kind of person from himself -- quieter, more sensitive, less stereotypically manly. His silent but complex reactions to Jim's final revelation were powerfully compelling and entirely believable.
Robertson touched a deep core of truth in the final scene where he discovered Lucille in the forest, and the two gently and quietly reconciled. And I did feel, from the tone of both actors in this scene, that their reconciliation would last. I truly wished that for them.
If there's an acid test for a performance of a play like this, it surely resides in the need for the audience to feel invested in the characters and their fates -- and this company passed the test with flying colours.
In the end, This Is How We Got Here involves us as audience in the same struggle depicted in Late Company -- the battle to speak our truth when confronted with the shock of the suicide of someone we love. With sincerity, humour, and -- above all -- with compassion, this production from Gore Bay Theatre has brought that truth to vivid, empathetic life.
Theatre Ontario Festival is an annual event which brings together the "best of the best" in Ontario's community theatres for a celebration of excellence. The four participating plays are invited as the winners of the four regional festivals. Each performance is adjudicated in detail by a professional theatre artist, in sessions which enhance learning and theatre experience for the performing company and audience alike. The adjudicator this year is Carolee Mason. Along with the performances, the Festival also includes workshops on various theatre topics, Playwright-in-Person readings, and other additional events. The week culminates with a celebration brunch when awards are presented.
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