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written by Kevin Loring, directed by Glynis Leyshon

Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad, Factory Theatre, Toronto

April 7-April 18, 2010

Kevin Loring’s Where the Blood Mixes is an emotionally powerful play that unflinchingly brings home the pain that the residential school system caused generations of Aboriginal communities.  This winner of the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Drama wisely foregoes didacticism for humour, drawing us into the characters’ lives so that we feel as acutely as they do how the past is an anguish they want to forget but must confront.

As a First Nation’s author Loring is permitted, as another writer would not, of first presenting his two main characters Floyd (Billy Merasty) and Mooch (Ben Cardinal) as stereotypes of the “drunken Indian.”  The interplay between the brusque Floyd and the dim-witted Mooch is initially very funny, rather as if they were the Bob and Doug Mackenzie of their local bar.  Soon enough we see that a hidden sorrow underlies Floyd’s irritability and that Mooch’s possible brain-damage is not so comic.  Similarly, Mooch’s wife June (Margo Kane) is first seen as a archetypal termagant, but Loring sets up the stereotype only to destroy it--to make us see the complex person underneath.  Preying on Floyd’s mind is the immanent arrival of his daughter Christine (Kim Harvey), who was taken away from Floyd for adoption since he was deemed an “unfit” parent.  Personal tragedies underlie the behaviour of all four characters and underlying those is the residential school system that tore children from parents and taught them they were lesser human beings than whites.  

The entire cast, including white bartender Tom McBeath, are excellent.  Cardinal and Kane are especially adept at transforming their characters from comedic to serious before our eyes.  Merasty and Harvey make the final reunion between Floyd and Christine both heartbreaking and cathartic.  On a variety of guitars Jason Burnstick provides a brilliant live soundtrack that enhances the action.  Only the use of digital projections adds an unwanted modern coldness to a story that succeeds best when presented with the utmost simplicity, as when Kane unravels a baby’s swaddling to form a flowing river.  This moving, important play was here for far too short a run during Luminato 2008.  Now that it’s back, don’t miss it.    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-04-08.

Photo: Billy Merasty and Ben Cardinal. ©David Cooper.