Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✭✩
by Melody A. Johnson, directed by Rick Roberts and Aaron Willis
Lunkamud with the Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
October 24-November 22, 2012
“Accentuate the Positive”
Melody A. Johnson presents the funny, heart-warming true story of her mother’s life in the revival of her 2010 SummerWorks hit Miss Caledonia. Tales of the desire of teenagers anxious to escape the confines of small-town life and the narrow world-view of those around them are not new. Yet, the winning innocence of Johnson’s portrayal of farm girl Peggy Ann Douglas and the keenly observed specificity of the details of her quest to become a movie star make the story wonderfully captivating and fresh.
Peggy Ann Douglas grows up in the 1950s on a farm in Caledonia on Rural Route 2 in Haldimand County, Ontario. In 1961 the population was only 2,198 and for the residents Hamilton, just 10 kilometres away, was the Big City. Peggy’s parents are imbued with the Scottish Protestant work ethic though an unusually rainy year in 1955 has left them with little to show for their efforts. The hand-built wooden farmhouse is lopsided and Peggy's mother has wallpapered it with newspaper, fortunately choosing only the more uplifting stories. But the biggest embarrassment for Peggy and her mother is that they still have no indoor plumbing and have to use an outhouse.
From the movies she’s seen in Hamilton and the magazines she’s read, Peggy gets the notion that the only way for her to escape the drudgery of farm work is to win a beauty pageant so she will get noticed and land a contract in Hollywood as a movie star. She reasons that if the unknown Mary Frances Reynolds could go to Hollywood after winning a beauty contest at age 16 to become the famous Debbie Reynolds, why so can she. Johnson’s 75-minute play shows how Peggy plans to start small, with Miss Fishing and Reel, and to work up to bigger titles like Miss Caledonia. Her first attempt at a title goes hilariously wrong but she perseveres and eventually her mother comes around to trying to help her daughter on to stardom, or at least a life that includes indoor plumbing. Peggy’s fantastic baton-twirling routine to Johnny Cash’s “I’ve Been Everywhere” is a real showstopper.
Johnson, always an engaging, unpretentious performer, draws us into her story immediately and keeps us in her gentle grip until the close. She plays over 20 characters, male and female, from her gruff father, her sensible mother, her awkward would-be boyfriend and the family’s malicious schoolmarm lodger to contest hosts and a wide array of contestants from the clueless to the flirtatious to the aggressively feminist. One character is Bing Crosby, whose picture hangs over her bed and who gives Peggy advice at crucial moments. When she is down he tells her to “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive” in the words of his 1944 hit by Harold Arlen. Those who have seen Johnson play only a single character in a show will be delighted to see her take on these multiple transformations. Since the theme of the story is transformation, the structure neatly reflects the theme and suggests that we are not bound by the roles others force upon us.
Adding to the atmosphere are the musical contributions of violinist Alison Porter. The violin sometimes creates sound effects – the cock crowing, the strike of an arrow – but often generates a mood or even reveals what Peggy is thinking. Porter only has to play the first notes of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” for us to know what Peggy is thinking to herself on a truck ride to Hamilton. Directors Rick Robert and Aaron Willis ask for deliberately jarring effects from lighting designer Raha Javanfar to capture the disorientation Peggy experiences during the sudden ups and downs of her quest.
Johnson’s love and respect for her mother shine through every moment of this beautifully written tale, whose language often captures the poetry of everyday life. Miss Caledonia is an absolutely delightful play to see on your own – but it would be even better to see it with your mother.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Andréanne Joubert (on bench) and the cast of I on the Sky. ©2010 Robert Etcheverry.
For tickets, visit http://youngpeoplestheatre.ca.
2012-10-25
Miss Caledonia