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by Michel Marc Bouchard, translated by Linda Gaboriau, directed by Micheline Chevrier

CanStage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

January 22-February 14, 2004

CanStage is presenting the English-language premiere of Québecois playwright Michael Marc Bouchard’s Written on Water (Les Manuscrits du déluge).  The subject matter is promising.  A small village has been swept away by a flood leaving a few seniors who had created their own town archive to salvage what is left.  History and memory, remembering as rewriting, the compulsion to preserve the past versus the impulse toward new experiences—these are all fascinating topics.  Bouchard raises them but does nothing with them, veering instead to topics of ageism and senior sexuality that he also does not develop, thus leaving a play that’s both superficial and pretentious.

A character called “Danny-the-lonely-child” (Jordan Pettle) wears angel’s wings and yearns to fly.  Samuel (David Fox), the leader of the seniors’ writing circle has always excluded him from their group, yet Danny knows everything they’ve ever written by heart.  He’s a symbol, obviously, not of the youth who have abandoned their elders, but, in a bit of unashamed self-aggrandizement, of the Writer who has not.

It doesn’t help that Pettle plays this key role so poorly.  He can’t give his lines the proper emphasis and can’t imitate the other characters as required.  Is he a Holy Fool, an idiot savant, a flightless Peter Pan—neither he nor director Micheline Chevrier seems to know.  The senior actors, however, are all excellent, especially Doris Chillcott as the dotty maxim-spouting Claire, Carolyn Hetherington as the still sexually alive Martha and Barbara Gordon as the prim and wifely Dorothy.                   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2004-10-28.

Photo: Jordan Pettle as Danny. ©2004 Bruce Zinger.