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written and directed by Studio Babette

Studio Babette Puppet Theatre, SpringWorks, Stratford Perth Museum, Stratford

October 1, 15 & 22, 2017;

Ruthven Park National Historic Site, Cayuga

November 6-11, 2017

    “And when they asked us,
    How dangerous it was.
    Oh! We'll never tell them,
    No, we'll never tell them.” (from Oh! What a Lovely War)

Since both the Stratford Festival and the Shaw Festival neglected to programme any works this year to commemorate the 100th anniversary of World War I, it is good that SpringWorks, Stratford’s annual festival of independent theatre, invited Studio Babette Puppet Theatre to perform its play From Ruthven to Passchendaele.  The puppet play is based on the true family history of the A.R. Thompson family of the Ruthven Park estate near Cayuga, Ontario.  The Thompson family thus serves as a microcosm for all Canadians who fought in the Great War and were lucky enough to survive.

Studio Babette, founded in Hamilton in 2007 by Marie Franek, created the play Young Sophia in 2010 for Dundurn Castle in Hamilton based on the diary of Sophia McNab, who lived there in 1846.  The Ruthven Park and Historic Site heard about Young Sophia and commissioned Studio Babette to create a play about the Thompson family who had fought in militias throughout Ontario’s history with Brock’s Rangers.  Relying on letters and other archival material made available to them along with the autobiographical novel No Path to Glory by A.R. Thompson, Studio Babette created From Ruthven to Passchendaele in 2013 with support from Veterans Affairs Canada's Community Engagement Partnership Fund. 

Though From Ruthven to Passchendaele is designed to enhance the Ontario Curriculum for Grade 8 History, Grade 9-10 History and Grade 10 Civics, the hour-long play is so engaging and the historical material so theatrically presented that it is a puppet play that should appeal to drama-lovers of all ages.  In fact, it is part of the magic of puppet plays like this that they stimulate the imagination of an audience in such a way that they become co-creators of the play and can become more involved in the action than they would in a conventional play.

Studio Babette tells the story in a style called tabletop bunraku using puppets about three feet high on a waist-high stage.  Each puppet is meticulously costumed and all the military uniforms well researched.  Unlike traditional Japanese bunraku which require three puppeteers per puppet, tabletop bunraku requires only one.  One hand of the puppeteer uses a handle to manipulate the head and the other hand a rod to manipulate one arm.  Although the faces on the puppets are unchanging, the puppeteers of Studio Babette have mastered the skill of knowing how to incline the head and make significant gestures with the arm so that we come to believe that a puppet’s expression has changed because of how we read its body language as  a whole.  Marie Franek and Kerry Corigan are also expert at clearly distinguishing how they voice the many characters they play.

The action opens with A.R. (Drew) Thompson recovering at a Spine Hospital in London, England, after being wounded at the devastating Battle of Passchendaele in 1917 in which 17 out of every 30 Canadians were killed, a total of 15,654 Canadian deaths.  Drew (Helena Adamczyk) is being tended by the nurse Lydia (Marie Franek).  Troubled by his dreams reliving the battle, Lydia suggests that telling her what happened might relieve his nightmares.  The rest of the play is a flashback that leads up to Drew’s stay in the hospital and moves beyond to his recovery.

The scene shifts back to the summer of 1904 when the Thompson siblings – Drew, his  brother Walter (Marie Franek) and his sister Peggy (Kerry Corrigan) – were all children living an idyllic life at Ruthven Park.  They play at being Brock’s Rangers fighting against the U.S, in the War of 1812 with one of their neighbours, Joseph, a Six Nations Native Cayuga, since the Thompsons were on good terms with the indigenous people of the area.  When news of the war comes, Drew, Walter and Joseph all enlist, thinking as many did that it would be a great adventure and a chance to see Europe.  Before they depart Drew and Walter are especially happy that their own father A.T. Thompson (Kerry Corrigan) will be their commander as Colonel of the 114th Battalion, coincidentally known as “Brock’s Rangers”.  On arrival in Europe, however, the first blow the group suffers is that they will all be split up.  A.T. Thompson will stay with the 114th, but Drew and Walter will be sent to different battalions and Joseph to a primarily all-indigenous battalion.  They have no assurance they will ever see each other again.

The play contains scenes in the trenches in Belgium and scenes in England of Thompson’s wife Violet (Marie Franek) and Peggy helping in the war effort.  These are interspersed with scenes of direct address from Drew and from Colonel Thompson explaining the facts of how the war progressed and the background to the Battle of Passchendaele.  Along the way we learn that the use of duckboards to line the muddy trenches was a Canadian idea. 

For scenes of battle where the main characters are involved, Studio Babette backlights its white backdrop and uses shadow puppets very effectively to re-create the action.  To illustrate the the horrific devastation after the battle, the backdrop becomes a screen where archival photos, some from the Ruthven Park collection, show better than any verbal description the landscape of barbed wire, mud and bodies where the men fought.  The photos are accompanied by an orchestral version of the “Evening Prayer” from Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel (1893), that conveys a range of complex emotions – the contrast of the peaceful music with the images of war, a hope that the fallen may rest in peace and the knowledge of the terribly futile cost of the battle in which both sides lost about 260,000 troops each.

One aspect of the war that Studio Babette emphasizes is the psychological as well as the physical cost of war.  We see that Drew does not feel he can answer any of his sister’s letters because his hand shakes so much he thinks she will suspect things are bad no matter what he says.  We also see that Walter after returning home feels he must repress the frightful memories of war so as not to upset friends and relations.  We know now that that is exactly the opposite of how to treat what would later be known as post-traumatic stress disorder.

The show closes with another well-chosen series of archival photos of all aspects of the war, this accompanied by the song “We’ll Never Tell Them” from the anti-war musical Oh! What a Lovely War (1969).  Here Jerome Kern’s song “They Didn’t Believe Me” (1914) is given new lyrics in which the survivors of war vow to lie to their sweethearts to protect them from the knowledge of the horrors they endured.

In the beginning From Ruthven to Passchendaele seems like a fairly straightforward retelling of the Thompson family’s experiences in World War I.  By the end of the hour-long play Studio Babette has left us with a much more complex view not just of the Great War but of armed conflict in general.  The research, artistry and passion that have gone into the creation of From Ruthven to Passchendaele give the play an impact far beyond what one might expect from its short running time.  After its appearance at SpringWorks in Stratford, the play travels to Ruthven Park itself with a performance on November 11th, surely the ideal time and place to see it.  Yet, if a trip to Cayuga isn’t possible, don’t miss the chance to see this thoughtful play while it is still in Stratford. 

       

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Mike and Drew Thompson in the trench; Marie Franek with Mike, Helena Adamczyk with Drew and Kerry Corrigan with Lydia.

For tickets, visit www.springworksfestival.ca or http://ruthvenparknationalhistoricsite.com.