✭✭✭✩✩

by Allen Cole & Vincent de Tourdonnet,

directed by Michael Shamata

CanStage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

April 8-May 1, 2004

"Worthy But Dull"

It’s so seldom one encounters a new, large-scale Canadian musical, one has to applaud the effort of CanStage and the National Arts Centre in bringing Pélagie to the stage.  It’s a project that has worthiness and good intentions written all over it.  More’s the pity, then, that the show, though nice to look at and easy on the ear, is so unengaging. 

At some point during its six years in development someone should have questioned whether Acadian writer Antonine Maillet’s 1979 novel Pélagie-la-Charette actually was a good subject for a musical.  Certainly the historical facts behind it should be more widely known.  Founded in 1604 Acadia became a haven for francophone Catholic colonists.  After many reversals the colony passed from French to English hands.  By 1775 the Acadians neutrality during the American War for Independence and their refusal to swear allegiance to the British monarch, led to the order for their mass deportation from Acadia to other British colonies.  Finally, in 1763 the Treaty of Paris allowed the Acadians to return what had been Acadia, though all the Acadians’ towns had been demolished and their lands turned over to British settlers.

The musical begins with the deportation of the widow Pélagie Leblanc and her children and neighbours from Grand Pré, Nova Scotia.  After 18 years in Georgia, Pélagie earns enough money to buy a cart and fulfill her vow as a kind of female Moses to return “her people” to Acadia.  The majority of the two-and-a-hours is taken up with Pélagie’s overland journey from Georgia to Grand Pré.  And this is the problem.

Pélagie presents us with an episodic story not a plot based on conflict between characters.  Any conflict that does arise, like the decision of Pélagie’s son to become American or her daughter to marry, are soon resolved that the trek goes on.  Certainly the characters are faced with trials--deaths, food shortages, the temptation to go to join the Acadians in Louisiana--but none of these events lead to changes in character.  Pélagie and her band of followers start out as idealized types and remain so until the end.  Lyricist Vincent de Tourdonnet and composer Allen Cole allow Pélagie to question a journey that forces her to forsake the love of the dashing Acadian Captain Beausoleil, but the simple mantra of “vow”, “home” and “Acadia” soon brings her back on track.

Without conflict more than two hours of unalloyed goodness and earnestness among seemingly unflawed characters is ultimately rather dull.  De Tourdonnet and Cole want to win us over to Pélagie’s cause which itself seems increasingly pointless.  How, after, 22 years away can she and her people expect Grand Pré to be the same as when they left it?  Pélagie sublimates her disappointment with “Where you are is Acadie”, that the people not a place is Acadia.  But this final “revelation”, of course, is a just familiar cliché.

De Tourdonnet’s lyrics seem deliberately to eschew all cleverness.  Cole’s music frequently soars usually in the familiar heroic patterns of Les Misérables with Jesus Christ Superstar and Fiddler in the Roof thrown in for variety.  The creators’ book so often requires the travelling Acadians to take a noble stance that it becomes difficult to tell the songs apart.  In a touch of magic realism, the creators picture the figure of Death, introduced by a fairly dreadful song, as a female courtier dressed in an red 18th-century gown pulling her own wagon decorated with Watteauesque paintings.  One would think someone would say something about the ironic parallel between Pélagie’s cart and Death’s wagon, but no one ever does even when both are simultaneously on stage.    

The 16-member company is well cast and gives committed performances.  Susan Gilmour rises to the challenge of the indomitable Pélagie and through gesture and expression makes her a richer character than the book or lyrics would suggest by discovering weakness beneath the show of strength.  Réjean J. Cournoyer as her rather improbable love interest Captain Beausoleil has a heroic voice and magnetic presence.  Mike Nadajewski sings well as Pélagie’s son Jean, though one wishes the creators had given him more than one character trait.  Amy Walsh is excellent at depicting the ageing of Pélagie’s daughter Madeleine from child to woman.  Shaun Amyot is thoroughly likeable as her boyfriend Charles-Auguste.  Jayne Lewis is suitably enigmatic as the rouged, ever-smiling Death.  On the other hand, Mary Ellen Mahoney’s abundant talent is wasted as the comic “wise woman” Célina, who is never given a decent wisecrack.  Cliff Le Jeune tries much too hard to make the 90-year-old Bélonie a lovable character.

Director Michael Shamata shows his ingenuity in making the cast’s innumerable circuits of the stage as they “travel” seem as different as possible, but ultimately it’s the same pattern repeated again and again.  Tracey Flye’s choreography is so welcome a change in the wedding scene it’s too bad there not more of it.  Costume designer Charlotte Dean, set designer John Ferguson and lighting designer John Munro give the work a warm, earthy glow.  Munro’s silhouetting of the travelling troop is especially effective.  The six-member band conducted by Jeffrey Huard includes three keyboards which make it sound like a much larger group.  

At the curtain call once the inevitable Acadian flag has been unfurled, one can hardly survey the large cast without being impressed by the talent to perform musical theatre that Canada has to offer.  As with recent Canadian operas like John Beckwith’s Taptoo! (1995) and D.D. Jackson’s Québécité (2003), the desire to create an uplifting Canadian work has stifled the ability to create exciting musical theatre.  Unless Canadian composers and librettists are willing to portray Canadians as flawed, complex people, we will indeed live up to the world’s view of us as dull.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Réjean Cournoyer and Susan Gilmour. ©2004 Canadian Stage.