Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
✭✭✭✩✩
by Malachy McKenna, directed by Miles Potter
Canadian Stage, Canadian Stage Theatre, Toronto
October 15-November 10, 2001
"Irishmen with Baggage"
Tillsonburg, immortalized in the song by Stompin' Tom Connors, is a small town about 40 kilometers east of St. Thomas, Ontario. It is also the name of a play by Irishman Malachy McKenna now receiving its North American première at the Canadian Stage Theatre at Berkeley Street. The main draw is the play's curiosity value: How many plays are there set in Southern Ontario written by non-Canadians? For once we think we might get an outsider's perspective on Canada. As it turns out the play is too formulaic to provide much insight. Canada merely provides local colour for the central story about the friendship of two Irish men. And, as it turns out, the event that changed both friends' lives happened not in Canada but in New York City. That the play works as well as it does is due entirely to superior direction and acting.
McKenna based the play, his first, on his own experience of seven summers picking tobacco in Tillsonburg. The play covers the Canadian sojourn of the friends, Michael "Mac" McBrien and Donal "Digger" Hogan, from their arrival at the tobacco farm to their departure at the end of the season. Providing glimpses of the lads over such a long period makes the play is necessarily episodic, but ultimately it falls into the pattern of what passes for "serious" drama on Broadway, i.e. first half is all funny jokes and situations, second half all emotional confrontations where hidden secrets are revealed.
The humour of the first half derives primarily from the adjustments of our two innocent Irishmen to the filthy lodgings, the backbreaking works and the Canadians they meet. The weirdest of the Canadians is Billy, a regular tobacco-picker whose marijuana-induced non sequiturs and far-out behaviour are a negative advertisement for what the job can do to a person. There is also the tobacco-farmer Jon, who manages to be cheery most of the time despite having lost his wife to Pete the Indian, as he is called, who seems to be the most charismatic person in the community. The dialogue frequently falls into the set-up and punchline style familiar from sitcoms. Except for Digger's nightmare that closes Act 1, there is no clear hint of the buried strife between the two friends or of any but imagined danger from Pete. Act 2 brings the hidden suffering of the characters to the surface in ways that involve awkward coincidences and Hollywood-style melodrama.
What makes the play watchable are the exceptional performances of the cast. Paul Essiembre (Mac) and author McKenna (Digger) both give intense, detailed portrayals of the two innocents as they come to terms with their new circumstances. It a major credit to Essiembre that his accent so closely matches that of the author. Essiembre's part also requires the greatest range from an ability to bring off the deadpan humour of Act 1 to the outpouring of painful emotions in Act 2. The hilarious sequence when Mac experiences his first high on Billy's marijuana is a masterpiece of acting in its own right. Digger is the more detached of the two, but McKenna is excellent at suggesting the unspoken emotional undercurrent of their relationship.
Paul Fauteux is so realistic as the drugged-up Sudbury boy Billy you forget that he is acting at all. The glazed expression, the discontinuities in what he says and does are all keenly observed. On top of this he wins our sympathy for this lost soul when at the close it is time for the workers' goodbyes. David Ferry is also excellent as the farmer/owner Jon. He makes us perceive that there is a personal grudge underlying his torrent of racist remarks against native people before we discover this is true.
McKenna has included Pete the Indian in a misconceived attempt to link the oppression of native people by Europeans to the oppression of the Irish by the English. McKenna tries to confound our preconceptions of native people by making Pete more articulate and informed than any other character. But when in Act 2 McKenna has Pete spout a series of politically correct bromides about oppression while attacking Digger, we see that McKenna is making the same mistake so many other non-native playwrights make when including native characters--Pete is there not as a fully rounded character but as a symbol. Lawrence Bayne does what he can to make Pete imposing and powerful but McKenna has given him little to work with.
Miles Potter proves yet again his expertise in reproducing the rhythm and flow of natural dialogue on stage. His highly detailed direction makes the Irish friends' first encounter with Canada especially enjoyable. He tries to keep the melodramatic events of Act 2 within a realistic focus, but McKenna's Hollywood solutions to the characters' problems can't seem other than contrived. Peter Hartwell has designed one of the most naturalistic sets yet to appear on the stage at Berkeley Street. Every aspect of the filthy bunkhouse has been so accurately broken down from the wood shavings on the floor to the discoloured sheets and the stained toilet that you can almost smell the place. The same is true of the characters' increasingly sweat- and tobacco-stained clothing. Kevin Lamotte's lighting reinforces the realism Potter and Hartwell have so painstakingly created.
Depictions of life in Canada by non-Canadians, especially in drama, are so rare that people will want to see "Tillsonburg" even if it is not a great play. People should not be surprised, however, if the play says more about its Irish protagonists than about its setting. As McKenna shows, frustrated expectations and dashed hopes can occur as easily in Canada as in Ireland. The Irish, though, bring such baggage with them that no new country can be an escape. If only McKenna had jettisoned the generic baggage borrowed from Broadway and Hollywood, "Tillsonburg" would not be so burdened by cliché.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Malachy McKenna. ©2001 David Hawe.
2001-10-25
Tillsonburg