✭✭✭✩✩ / ✭✭✭✩✩
<b> Matthew MacFadzean, directed by Daryl Cloran /
by Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Christian Barry
Theatrefront, Young Centre, Toronto
October 10-24, 2009</b><b>
</b>
Theatrefront has embarked on its largest project ever with <i>The Mill</i>, a four-play series covering 400 years set in a sawmill in a small Ontario town. Each play has a different author and director but the set, design team and cast remain the same. <i>Part One: Now We Are Brody</i> by Matthew MacFadzean is set in the fiction town of Brody in 1854. <i>Part Two: The Huron Bride</i> by Hannah Moscovitch is set in Jamestown, Brody’s previous name, twenty years before the events in <i>Part One</i>. <i>Part Three</i> by Tara Beagan will premiere in spring next year and <i>Part Four</i> in the fall. The series is meant to give an impression of how four thirtysomething playwrights of varied backgrounds view Canada’s history. It is a plan with great potential, but on the evidence of the first two plays this potential has not been realized. The views of MacFadzean and Moscovitch add nothing to the ideas of Northrop Frye’s “garrison mentality” (1971) or Margaret Atwood’s “Survival” (1972) as defining elements of the Canadian identity. All that is new is the dilution of these ideas through horror movie tropes on stage.
In <i>Brody</i>, Charlotte MacGonigal (Michelle Monteith) comes to Upper Canada to take over an abandoned mill she has inherited from her father. The locals want her out since her father was responsible for horrific event there in the past. Now the mill is haunted by Lyca (Holly Lewis), a mysterious girl in white. In <i>Bride</i>, we discover what these horrors were and how Lyca died, when an Irishwoman, Hazel Sheehan (Monteith) arrives to work for the mill-owner James MacGonigal (Ryan Hollyman), Charlotte’s father. He and Hazel fall in love but the restless spirits of native people buried under the mill wreak a gruesome revenge. <i>Brody</i> combines plot elements from <i>The Exorcist</i> and <i>Carrie</i>, while <i>Bride</i> adds <i>Jane Eyre</i>, <i>The Shining</i> and <i>The Rocky Horror Picture Show</i> into the mix. The plot-driven <i>Bride</i> is much more successful as a stand-alone piece of Grand Guignol than <i>Brody</i>, sadly deficient in plot, character development and pacing.
Monteith and Lewis give the best performances in both--Monteith the sole intense focus of earnest emotion, Lewis, though a clichéd demon child, a frightening portrayal of channelled otherworldly forces. Hollyman, who attempts to match Monteith’s intensity seems merely dazed. Eric Goulem, saddled with playing a stereotyped Quebecois, evokes much, mostly unintentional, humour. Maev Beaty plays the town busybody as if she were the Wicked Witch of the West.
The staging itself is impressive. Gillian Gallow’s set is wonderfully detailed. Andrea Lundy’s lighting is stunningly inventive. Richard Feren’s child’s-tune-goes-spooky is a real earworm. Simon Fon’s stunts and fights are cringe-makingly realistic. It’s just too bad that both MacFadzean and Moscovitch are more preoccupied with recycling as many genre elements as possible than with writing incisive plays about Canada.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2009-10-16.
Photo: Holly Lewis as Lyca. ©Chris Gallow.
<b>2009-10-16</b>
<b>The Mill (Part One): Now We Are Brody / The Mill (Part Two): The Huron Bride</b>