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music, lyrics & book by Tomson Highway, directed by John Van Burek

Pleiades Theatre and Théâtre français de Toronto, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs,

October 12-23, October 28-November 6, 2016

“Miroité dans la vitrine”

Tomson Highway’s new work for theatre is a one-woman musical.  It is thoroughly delightful and Patricia Cano is the ideal performer for the role.  Highway first wrote the piece in English with the title The (Post) Mistress.  The final draft of the musical had its premiere in 2012 in Peterborough, Ontario.  Then he and Raymond Lalonde translated the piece into French under the more whimsical title Zesty Gopher s’est fait écraser par un frigo (“Zesty Gopher was crushed by a refrigerator”).  The French version debuted at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa also in 2012.  Pleiades Theatre and Théâtre français de Toronto are currently presenting the work in both languages – in French with English surtitles from October 12 to 23 and in English with French surtitles from October 28 to November 6.  Whichever language you choose, you can be assured of a life-affirming experience and a sensational performance by Patricia Cano.

The musical is set in the fictional Francophone village of Lovely, Ontario (population 1000), just about 100 miles from the city of Complexity, famous for its copper mines and a huge penny that greets all drivers into town (no points for guessing what town this is).  Marie-Louise Painchaud, a Métis, is the post-mistress of Lovely and is busy sorting letters into the enormous pigeonholes that make up the entire back wall of Teresa Przybylski’s elegant set.  The year is 1986, that blissful time before e-mail when children were still taught cursive writing and people still wrote letters.  49-year-old Marie Louise, who has been working at the post office for the past 30 years, has the uncanny ability of being able to read people’s letters without opening them.  We’re free to think of this as a supernatural power or realize, as Marie-Louise tells us, that she knows her clients so well that she can guess what every letter is about. 

The musical consists of Marie-Louise coming across certain letters that strike a chord with her, telling us the background of the correspondents and interpreting the letter’s contents in song.  If a letter strikes a chord it is because it relates to something in Marie-Louise’s own life.  Thus, we simultaneously learn more about the post mistress the more we learn about the town’s inhabitants.  Marie-Louise, born and raised in Lovely, has never travelled far from home due to her fear of flying.  So letters from Buenos Aires, Rio and New Orleans give her a chance to experience foreign places vicariously.  Also her life with her second husband Rolland and her four children is not exactly exciting so that letters between lovers also allow her to experience vicariously the transports of passion.     

Some Torontonians will already know how wonderful these songs are if they were lucky enough to attended a cabaret called Kisageetin in 2010 where where Cano and Highway at the piano presented the songs from The (Post) Mistress without the dialogue.  As the twelve songs exist in Zesty Gopher, one is in English, two in Cree, nine in French and the final one in all three.  Highway’s musical idiom remains within the realm of jazz-influenced popular song, with Cole Porter as a major model.  Highway gives us a wide range of styles from ballads, and blues to a bossa nova, a samba, a patter song and a hymn.  For this production we have the extraordinary privilege of hearing Highway himself at the piano accompanying Cano along with the saxophone stylings of Marcus Ali.

The most memorable songs of the Act 1 are a lullaby “Oh Little Bear” about a boy who wishes his parents would get back together again and “The Window”, a fantastically witty song about a woman from Lovely who falls in love with a charming guy in Toronto who turns out to be abusive.  Act 2 starts with the rousing samba “When Last I Was in Bueno Aires, Argentina” in which Marie-Louise imagines a wild affair with a local.  The way Cano brings out the sexual innuendo of the words is hilarious and her performance of Marie-Josée Chartier’s choreography is pure delight as Cano makes it seem as if Marie-Louise becomes increasingly caught up in her fantasy.  This song is what gives the English version of The (Post) Mistress its title.  The following song about Zesty Gopher obviously

gives its name to the the French version of the show.  Contrary to what one might think, the song about the funeral of Zesty Gopher is not at all comic.  It is, perhaps, the most moving song of the show and the prayer of Zesty’s mother in Cree will give a non-First Nations audience an insight into indigenous people’s vision of the cycle of life. 

Cano is a charismatic performer whose sense of humour and warm-heartedness are immediately attractive.  Her voice has a huge range from dusky low notes through an amber-like middle register to bright top notes.  Her diction is absolutely clear and she is able to give a unique flavour not only to separate songs but to draw shades of meaning from individual words.  Though other singers have played the role of Marie-Louise, after seeing Cano it is difficult to imagine anyone better suited to it who can generate so much energy and emotion that it envelopes an entire audience.

Director John Van Burek has beautifully staged the show and imaginatively has had Cano interact with both Highway and Ali.  Highway’s musical does have an unexpected twist near the end which struck me as unnecessary.  It lends a sentimentality to the piece and tends to make the vibrant, earthy human being we have been enjoying into a symbol which really goes contrary to all that has gone before.  If Highway wants to bring out a metaphysical side to the action, hints and allusions throughout the evening would be sufficient so that we are left with an open-ended ambiguity rather than being compelled to adopt a single interpretation. 

Despite that, Zesty Gopher s’est fait écraser par un frigo is a hugely enjoyable show.  It has the same kind of feeling as Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood (1954) about the citizens of the fictional Welsh village of Llareggub, where individual desire struggles against the small town conservatism  and religious conformism.  Highway’s portraits of Marie-Louis and the twelve letter-writers especially emphasize the need to find some fulfilment in a life that can be all too short.  With a singer like Cano in what may be Highway’s mellowest work for the stage, Zesty Gopher is a show that no one should miss.    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (from top) Patricia Cano; Patricia Cano and Tomson Highway.  ©2016 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit http://theatrefrancais.com/shows/the-post-mistress/