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by Dan Needles, directed by Douglas Beattie

Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford

June 4-August 14, 2005

"A Hot Night in the Old Township"

It wasn’t so long ago that people referred to Dan Needles’s series of plays about Walt Wingfield, the fictional stockbroker turned farmer, as the “Wingfield Trilogy”.  A coffee store in Stratford has even immortalized this name as one of its house blends.  But now, the original play, “A Letter from Wingfield Farm” from 1985, has spawned not two but five sequels to become the “Wingfield Hexalogy”.  The sixth installment, “Wingfield’s Inferno”, which had its first preview this year at the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, B.C., on May 10, and is now playing at the Tom Patterson Theatre in Stratford, will help satisfy the seemingly insatiable appetites of all lovers of the series (known as “Wing-Nuts”) for more of Walt’s adventures.

The question naturally arises, “Is this Wingfield as good as the others?”  To this, I can easily answer “Yes”.  You meet all of your favourite characters and several new ones, the incidents are hilarious and Hope, Walt’s daughter born during the ice storm in Part 5, speaks for the first time.  If, however, the question is more specifically “Is this Wingfield as good as the fifth installment, ‘Wingfield on Ice’?”, then, regretfully, I would have to say “No”. 

Over the years Walt’s anecdotes of country life, told in the form of letters to a newspaper editor, have become more closely linked in exploring a common theme.  This technique reached a peak in “Wingfield on Ice” a play that dared to take on the biggest theme of all--birth, death and rebirth.  “Wingfield’s Inferno” finds Needles torn between the earlier episodic mode of Wingfield vignettes and the revelatory mode in “Wingfield on Ice”, where all details contributed to the central theme. 

In “Wingfield’s Inferno” that central theme is insurance, or more broadly the question of how to know whether taking a risk or playing it safe is the wiser course of action.  The question is prompted by the event that opens the play, the burning to the ground of the Orange Hall, the focus of community life in Persephone township, the place where Walt and Maggie got married, the place where Maggie gave birth to her first child Hope during the ice-storm.  The Hall was not insured.  Walt’s task at the behest of the enigmatic town clerk Harold is first to raise funds for rebuilding and then to see if the town’s application for a grant to renovate the Orange Hall can somehow still be approved even though the Hall no longer exists.

This situation leads Walt to various rants about how insurance which originally was established to protect people has now become a means that restricts people’s lives.  He compares modern insurance companies to the usurers and those who have done violence to art whom Dante places lower in seventh circle in his “Inferno” than tyrants and suicides.  Some very funny side plots dealing Walt’s attempts to rid his hen house of skunks and Willy and Dave’s attempts to train a horse to race don’t really have much to do with the theme of insurance.  Their moral seems Robbie Burns’s that the “best-laid plans of mice and men Gang aft agley”. 

At the same time, the grand set-piece of the whole play, the elaborate ruse that Harold and the redoubtable Mrs. Lynch cook up to deceive the visiting Joe Clark-like Member of Parliament in which Walt is a helpless pawn, seems to demonstrate just the opposite.  Needles’s periodic attempts to relate these events to the theme seems forced whereas in “Wingfield on Ice” they grew naturally from the given circumstances.  “Wingfield on Ice” dealt with some of the darker sides of country life like isolation and multigenerational feuds between neighbours.  But in “Wingfield’s Inferno”, Needles exaggerates first the risks of treating Hope’s ear infection and then its escalation into a full-blown medical emergency.

Having said all this, I can aver that virtually no one but those compelled to compare “Wingfield on Ice” with “Wingfield’s Inferno” will be troubled by these differences.  The episode of “tricking the MP” has the aura of a true classic and the episode of “catching the skunk” gives actor Rod Beattie an ideal opportunity to demonstrate his mastery of physical comedy. 

Beattie’s ability to morph from one identity to another among the familiar gallery of past characters and the many newly added characters both animal and human continues to astound.  Many practitioners of the one-man show could learn from him how to keep multiple characters distinct through simple but significant changes in voice, posture, and gesture.  Timing as perfect as his, though, must surely be innate.

Though the Wingfield series most often plays on proscenium stages, director Douglas Beattie has thoughtfully re-blocked the action to make full use of the Tom Patterson Theatre’s thrust stage.  Even those in the wretched seats of Section B will not feel left out.  As usual, Louise Guinand's lighting cues are tied closely to the text.  In the most notable example her lighting makes us aware that the Orange Hall is on fire long before Walt realizes it.

A person does not have to have seen the previous five plays to enjoy this new "Wingfield", but newcomers may wonder why Rod Beattie’s introduction of certain characters from the past produces such howls of laughter.  It is a laughter of delighted recognition.  American audience members may also be puzzled by certain Canadian references, to which all I can say is, “Guess what, this is a Canadian play.  Get used to it”.  While “Wingfield’s Inferno” may not be quite as thought-provoking as it would like to be or, indeed, as “Wingfield on Ice” was, it’s a highly enjoyable, laugh-out-loud show that will have you eagerly waiting for “Wingfield #7”.  As usual Beattie will tour of "Wingfield’s Inferno” around Ontario and beyond.  If you can't make it to Stratford, the next stops are the River Run Centre in Guelph (December 8-10) and the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto (April 25-June 4).  “Wing-Nuts” will need no encouragement.  Newcomers may well find themselves hooked.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Rod Beattie as Windy Hallett. ©2005 Terry Manzo.