Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
✭✭✭✭✭
by John Gray with Eric Peterson, directed by Ted Dykstra
Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto
August 12-29, 2009;
July 10-August 5, 2017
Soulpepper’s revival of Billy Bishop Goes to War is a self-recommending production. It stars Eric Peterson and John Gray, who created the musical in 1978 that became one of the most produced Canadian plays ever written. Now they both are 62, the age when Billy Bishop died, and have revised the script to reflect this.
Rather than being costumed as two World War I fliers reliving Bishop’s achievements, Peterson is in pyjamas, a robe and slippers while Gray at the piano is in contemporary casual wear. Camellia Koo’s set is made up of suitcases, military trunks, paintings, old photos and toys, as if Peterson and Gray were rummaging through an attic and finding the history hidden there. With “props” and various theatre names painted on these items, director Ted Dykstra brings out the metatheatrical nature of the production as a re-creation and transformation of earlier productions.
The achievement of the piece is in formulating, perhaps for the first time, what a Canadian hero is like. He is clearly not like the British with a centuries of heroic models, etiquette to follow and hierarchies to accept. Rather Peterson and Gray emphasize not only how accidental Bishop’s heroism is but how aware he is of his oafishness and his luck. In their telling of the tale, Bishop becomes a pilot not because of any romantic love of flying, but because he doesn’t want to die in the mud of the trenches. In airplanes that were little better than “kites with motors,” Bishop’s primary goal is simply to survive. Downing a plane does give him a thrill and his bloodlust increases with the number of his kills. Yet, no one need worry that the show glorifies war. The most resonant songs in the show, like “Friends Ain’t S’posed to Die,” reflect on the pointlessness of it all, especially when another war is right around the corner.
The performances of both Peterson and Gray are more poignant now, the bravado of war more clearly naive. Peterson glides among his eighteen roles as effortlessly as Gray’s accompaniment segues between skilful mood-setting and clever word-setting. This is a Canadian classic that deserves the name and with Peterson and Gray, what more could you ask for?
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-08-13.
Photo: Eric Peterson as Billy Bishop. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2009-08-13
Billy Bishop Goes to War