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by Vern Thiessen, directed by Eric Coates

Blyth Festival, Memorial Theatre, Blyth

July 1-August 6, 2011

Anyone in search of fine theatre in southwestern Ontario should be sure to see the Blyth Festival production of Vimy.  The play by Winnipeg playwright Vern Thiessen premiered in 2007 to commemorate the 90th anniversary of 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge in World War I.  While the battle fought solely by Canadian forces against the Germans has been made into a symbol of Canadian unity, Thiessen’s play seeks to demythologize the event by looking at the private stories of six individuals involved in it as based on three years of extensive research into letters and diaries written by the participants.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was not one of the decisive battle of World War I, but it was the first time all four Canadian divisions, made up of troops from all parts of the country, fought together as a cohesive unit.  Brigadier-General Alexander Ross, a battalion commander at Vimy, later stated that as he watched the Canadian troops advance that morning, "It was Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific on parade. I thought then...that in those few minutes I witnessed the birth of a nation".  This is the prevailing view.  Yet, historian John Pierce points out that “The historical reality of the battle has been reworked and reinterpreted in a conscious attempt to give purpose and meaning to an event that came to symbolize Canada's coming of age as a nation”.  Thiessen uses his six characters to show that Canadians joined the military for a wide variety of reasons, not necessarily related to patriotism, and that what unites his group of individuals in not a sense of Canada as a nation but rather a general sharing of suffering and loss.   

From April 9 to April 12, 1917, about 24,000 Canadian troops fought successfully to gain control of the strategic escarpment known as Vimy Ridge in northern France from the Germans.  The Canadian Corps suffered 10,602 casualties: 3,598 killed and 7,004 wounded.  Thiessen’s play focusses on a four wounded soldiers recovering in a field hospital in Boulogne-sur-Mer, tended by the nurse Clare, from Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia.  Her story is based on The War Diary of Clare Gass, edited by Susan Mann.  In her care is Sid, a Winnipeg labourer, now blinded; Jean-Paul, a Québécois butcher, with shell shock; Mike, a Blood Indian scout from Alberta, suffering from poison gas inhalation; and Will, a canoe-maker from Ontario, whose left arm and should are severely damaged.  Thiessen’s four patients thus present a cross-section of Canada, just as the real Canadian Corps was said to be. 

Initially none of the four claim to remember what happened to them, but as the play progresses, seemingly insignificant words or objects will trigger memories that actors then re-enact.  The play thus becomes a communal memory play for the four patients and Nurse Clare, who also lost someone important in the battle, namely Laurie, a Nova Scotia Highlander, who hoped to marry her once the war was over. 

Thiessen very skillfully intertwines these five stories playing certain themes against each other.  Jean-Paul enlists hoping to have a better life on his return than being a butcher.  This mundane motivation contrasts with Mike, who has a vision on a mountaintop that he interprets as a command to go to war.  Sid and Will joined for the sake of adventure, but there is a strange tension between the two in hospital that is only gradually revealed.  In contrast, Clare and her beau Laurie, who becomes a Nova Scotia Highlander, join as  patriotic duty.  Though the escalating squabbles between Jean-Paul and Mike, Thiessen shows that communal combat has not cured the participants of prejudice.  The play’s primary flaw is that it is too convenient to have the two minority characters attack each other which avoids showing a similar prejudice in the Anglos Sid and Will. 

There is not a weak link the the cast.  As Will, Blyth regular Gil Garratt gives the most intense performance, suggesting a barely repressed anger beneath all his actions that seems directed not just at his infirmity but at himself and at the war in general.  He receives a significant postcard at the end to which Garratt gives a response so powerful in its ambiguity it seems to sum up Thiessen’s view of the battle itself.

Mark Crawford portrays Sid as a thoroughly likable, ordinary guy with naïve dreams of an idyllic future.  Sébastien David plays an excitable Jean Paul suffering from tremors and mutism resulting from shell shock.  He effortlessly charts his characters’ wide dramatic arc from youthful enthusiasm to the disturbing events that cause his condition.  He also plays Mike’s solemn friend Bert, whom he makes quite distinct from Jean Paul.  Meegwun Fairbrother plays an uncertain Mike, who wins strength and confidence with the help of Bert.  He also plays Jean Paul’s best friend Claude, but in an altogether more outgoing style.  The script requires both actor to deliver lines in English, French and Kainai, which they accomplish without hesitation. 

As Laurie, Greg Gale is both a mysterious silent presence and the lively, if slightly pedantic Nova Scotia lad Clare falls in love with.  Tova Smith gives a lovely performance as Clare, a woman who has learned the gift of coping with her private sorrow through helping others in theirs. 

Designer Gillian Gallow has created a clever, deceptively simple set of four iron beds against a towering back wall of folded towels.  The wall suggests not just the hospital setting but the piles of sandbags used to shore up the sides of trenches and thus reinforces the play’s constant refrain that the hospital inmates are still mentally surrounded by the consequences of the battle.  Rebecca Picherack’s lighting is essential in distinguishing the present from the numerous times  and settings in the characters‘ flashbacks.  Director Eric Coates imaginatively uses the set to convey scenes of battle played out in the patients’ minds, such as the spaces between beds as trenches or the beds themselves a dry parcels of ground in the midst of muddy fields. 

You could hardly hope for a more appropriate venue for Vimy than Blyth’s Memorial Hall, built in 1922 as a monument to those lost in World War I.  During the final fadeout, lights come up on plaques on either side of the stage listing the names those who died in both World Wars, linking the events of the play to the venue and the history of the village.  It is hard to imagine a more sensitive, insightful production of the play than this.        

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Sébastien David, Meegwun Fairbrother, Gil Garratt and Mark Crawford.

©2011 Terry Manzo.

For Tickets, visit www.blythfestival.com.