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by Michael Healey, directed by Richard Greenblatt

Tarragon Theatre, Toronto

January 8-February 10, 2002

"The Best Laid Plans"

If the best laid plans "gang aft agley" as Burns has it, the worse then for poorly laid plans.  So it is with Michael Healey's follow-up to his enormously successful "The Drawer Boy" of 1999.  "Plan B", a satirical comedy about the separation of Quebec, runs out of breath about 15 minutes before the end of Act 1.  Act 2 remains on life-support throughout until Healey decides he can no longer eke out his concept and pulls the plug.  Fine acting, design and direction only emphasize how inadequate Healey's plan is for "Plan B".

The premise of the action, set in the near future, is that a referendum in Quebec has produced a 53% majority for separation.  While the real negotiations for the separation of Quebec go on in secret, a second set of negotiations are held purely for show in a fully-bugged meeting room in a hotel in Hull.  We watch the latter set as two officials from Quebec and two from the Canadian government try to keep up the pretense of having meaningful debates while they co-ordinate their schedule of leaks.  This highly orchestrated plan goes awry when Michael Fraser, the Federal Finance Minister, gets the hots for Lise Fréchette, the Quebec Intergovernmental Affairs Minister.  Soon the political negotiations for separation are intercut with the couple's not-so-private negotiations for getting together. 

Up to this point the show has been a lot of fun, quick paced and filled with trenchant humour, though rather more like an extended comic sketch than a play.  Having taken the private affair to the stage where the other two negotiators are reasonably comfortable with it, Healey doesn't know  what to do next.  So he calls up a "diabolus ex machina" in the form of the United States, which has massed troops along the Quebec border  set to invade to  protect its interests in "la belle province" should it separate.  All deals in both sets of negotiations are off and Michael, becoming more of a loose cannon, tries to persuade both Lise and Quebec to stay.  Once we enter this all-too-familiar territory, the laughter has already died down and we start to wonder how Healey is going to fill out the 70 minutes following intermission. 

The answer is with lots of padding.  Luckily, there are surtitles to watch so that one can pass the time by comparing the dialogue in French or English with the projected translations.  This is quite useful for learning the equivalent swear words in each language.  Healey's dialogue, so biting through most of Act 1, becomes so tentative I thought several times the actors had lost their places.  But, no, a glance at the surtitles showed that this inconsequential word-spinning was really what Healey had written.  Scene after scene goes nowhere as we watch Michael and the Quebec premier watch television, as we watch Michael and Lise watch television, as we watch Lise wake up after falling asleep on the conference table. 

The low point of Act 2 is surely when the Senator from Saskatchewan, who has previously been presented as solely Anglophone, unaccountably delivers a long, pointless address half in English, half in fluent French to the remaining bugs in the empty meeting room (I guess), chronicling how English Canada has screwed French Canada through the decades.  When he later asks about the negotiations, "Quand est-ce que ça va terminer?", he pretty much sums up our thoughts about the play.  Eventually, we find Michael on the phone to his daughter.  After that his attempts at speaking French and sympathies for  Lise and Quebec are over, and so is the play.  Was it this sudden reminder of his family back home that changed him?  Conversations overheard assured me I was not the only one who found the ending disappointing and unclear. 

After the fluffy first act, Healey tries to bring up deeper topics in Act 2.  Canadians in general are motivated by fear.  They hate the outdoors and Canada is mostly outdoors.  English Canadians share the fear of having to act.  French Canadians fear only one thing less than staying in Canada, and that is leaving it.  Yet, by Act 2 we don't really care about the characters anymore or what they think.  Healey brings up the possibility that the affair is just another part of the couple's political strategy, but he never follows through on it.  Nor does he pursue his repeated McLuhanesque idea that more than anything else we are united by television.    

A lot of talent has been expended on this insubstantial material.  It's good to see Peter Donaldson in a contemporary play.  He makes Michael a pleasantly quirky character, his unconventionality knocking against his conventionality and trying to get out.  Marie-Hélène Fontaine makes Lise appealing through the sheer force of her personality, a woman who walks into an affair with no illusions but is still betrayed.  At the performance I attended Peter MacNeill as Senator Colin Patterson, fluffed a fair amount of lines, but he is very good at giving some individuality to what is otherwise a caricature of a redneck.  John Dolan is well cast as Mathieu Lapointe, the nonentity who is the Quebec Premier, though he generally did not lend either his French or English lines a Québecois accent. 

Director Richard Greenblatt's abilities are best seen in the first act where he has something to work with.  His pacing is expert with the punchy comedy.  In the second act he has to fall back mostly on creating mood and interesting stage pictures.  Luckily, he has Glen Charles Landry handsome and ingenious set to use.  Christina Poddubiuk's costumes are attractive and appropriate, and Andrea Lundy's lighting is subtle and effective throughout.

One can see why Healey should wish to turn his hand to something completely different from the keenly observed human drama of the "The Drawer Boy" that made him famous.  But why he should turn to such a hoary old theme and why he should embody it in such a clichéd way (Anglo man falls for Québecois woman) is surprising in a playwright who previously could find so much in the everyday.  Having tried "Plan B", let's hope he returns to Plan A.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Peter Donaldson on cover of Plan B, Playwrights Canada Press, 2002.