✭✭✭✭✭

by David French, directed by Ted Dykstra

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

June 30-July 30, 2009

Soulpepper plus David French adds up to yet another great evening of theatre.  For Of the Fields, Lately (1973), French’s sequel to his breakthrough play Leaving Home (1972), Soulpepper has brought back Jeff Lillico, Kenneth Welsh and Diane D’Aquila to play the same roles of Ben Mercer and his parents Jacob and Mary that they did for Soulppeper’s superb staging of Leaving Home in 2007.  Adding to the realism, the action of Fields takes place two years after that of Home, so we and the actors have aged exactly as much as the characters.  Eric Peterson in the role of Ben’s Uncle Wiff completes the starry cast.

Outwardly, little happens.  Ben returns home for the funeral of his Aunt Dot, Mary’s sister and Wiff’s wife, to discover that his father has been off work with a bad heart.  To stay and help the family’s finances or to leave and let his father die at work is Ben’s dilemma.  The play is shot through with the mordant humour of this displaced Newfoundland family, but its underlying themes will tug at the emotions of anyone with ageing parents or relatives.  Mary states that we're all fighting the same enemy--Time.  French details with great sensitivity how each of the characters comes to accept this reality.          

This is most difficult for Ben and Jacob, a father and son too alike in male pride to express their real feelings for each other.  Welsh and Lillico convey all the anger, humour and, ultimately, tragedy of their repeatedly unsuccessful attempts to communicate.  D’Aquila is once again the indomitable mother but now haunted with fear of losing Jacob.  Peterson’s Wiff, actively dealing with a death in his own foolish but endearing way, represents the subtext of the Mercers’ worries made explicit.  As in Leaving Home, director Ted Dykstra draws completely natural, all-too-believable performances from the cast who interact in anger and conciliation just like a real family.  The underlying sadness that comes through especially in Lillico’s monologues is how isolated all individuals are from each other, how unknowable the real nature is of even those we love the most.  It’s a privilege to see how effortlessly Dykstra and this ideal cast so fully capture the play’s subtle beauty.                 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-07-03.

Photo: Diane D’Aquila and Kenneth Welsh. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.