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by Vern Thiessen, directed by Diana Leblanc

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

July 10-August 5, 2017

“When there’s trouble brewing

When there’s something doing,

Are we downhearted?  No!  Let ‘em all come!”

    (“Here We Are, Here We Are Again!”

    song by Charles Knight & Kenneth Lyle, 1915)

Canada’s sesquicentennial is being celebrated in theatres across the country with an emphasis on Canadian plays.  But 2017 marks another milestone in Canadian history – the Battle of Vimy Ridge fought by Canadians in April 1917 during World War I.  It is surprising that neither the Stratford Festival nor the Shaw Festival has so far programmed any plays having anything to do with World War I (1914-18).  The two still have one more year to mark this centennial, but at least Soulpepper has taken the lead and programmed two World War I-themed shows – a remount of Billy Bishop Goes to War and its first production of Vern Thiessen’s 2007 play Vimy.

The Battle of Vimy Ridge was the first time all four Canadian divisions, made up of troops from all parts of the country, fought together as a cohesive unit.  It has been mythologized as the crucible that moulded the disparate parts of the country into a nation.  But Thiessen shows that what the Canadians share most is not a sense of patriotism but communal suffering and loss. 

Thiessen’s play focusses on 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 temporarily 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 shoulder 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 characters 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. 

The Blyth Festival mounted a superb production of the play in 2011, of which I said, “It is hard to imagine a more sensitive, insightful production of the play than this.”  The statement is still true.  The Soulpepper production makes superior use of technical means, with lighting designer André du Toit and sound designer John Gzowski coordinating their efforts to create a wide range of effects to recreate the atmosphere of an ongoing war.  Du Toit’s lighting is essential in helping us distinguish between the scenes occurring in the present of the play and the multiple flashbacks of the five main characters. 

Yet, while these effects are important, what makes or breaks a communal memory play like this is its sense of community.  Here the Soulpepper production, unlike that at Blyth, does not succeed, even under the guidance of so sensitive a director as Diana Leblanc.  From beginning to end Nurse Clare and her four patients come across as five separate individuals rather than five human beings who have been united by their horrific experience of war.

Part of the reason is that with Soulpepper currently decamped for a month of performances in New York, none of the cast are Soulpepper regulars and four of the six are making their Soulpepper debuts in this play.  It is always difficult to draw ensemble acting from a group working together for the first time. 

Sébastien Bertrand is a veteran performer at Théâtre français de Toronto and this is the first time I have ever seen him act in English.  He clearly distinguishes his two characters of the wounded Jean-Paul and Mike’s buddy Bert back in Manitoba through pitch, accent and gesture to such an extent you would hardly think the two were played by the same actor.  Thiessen’s depiction of Jean-Paul as a feisty Québécois who easily flies off the handle may be a bit of a cliché, but Bertrand tamps this down by inhabiting the character so fully.

Tim Dowler-Coltman, who brought out the vulnerability in a murderous character in Orphans for Coal Mine Theatre earlier this year, gives an especially powerful performance as Sid.  The blinded Winnipegger has a fantasy of finding physical warmth in Bora Bora that matches his desire for emotional warmth.  He mistakes Will’s friendliness towards him as signifying something more and is deeply embarrassed when Will rebuffs his advances.  Dowler-Coltman makes Sid the most sympathetic of all the patients.  We feel that his nightmares when he relives his battles and injuries also reverberate with loneliness. 

It is pity given these three fine performances that the other three should be so indifferent.  All three fail to invest their characters with any personality and all three seem to focus on the one central speech that Thiessen gives them while neglecting to build up their characters with the dialogue that precedes it. 

Like Nurse Clare, her boyfriend Laurie should show a difference in attitude before the war and during the war.  Andrew Chown imbues Laurie with so little vibrancy its hard to know what Clare sees in him.  He gives a fiery delivery of Laurie’s speech later about how the war has permanently messed him up inside, but the speech comes out of nowhere since Chown does not even hint at Laurie’s interior feelings in his conversation with Clare just before.  To make his relationship with Clare believable, Horne really has to do the acting for both of them. 

Similarly, Wesley French seems to latch only onto Mike’s bitterness as a defining characteristic.  He effectively plays Jean-Paul’s brother Claude, but, except for speaking French, does not much distinguish the two.  Like Chown, he seems to be saving himself for his big speech, here describing the mustard gas attack that has ruined his lungs, which he does with a power we didn’t know he had till then.

T.J. Riley’s approach as Will is the same.  Until his major speech about how he received his arm wound and was sprayed with shrapnel, Riley does not invest his role with much energy.  When Gil Garratt played the part at Blyth, Will was an ambiguous figure imbued with intensity.  With Garratt, unlike with Riley, it was easy to see how Sid might mistake an invitation to go canoeing for something more.  Later on during the war when Will receives messages from Sid, Garratt, unlike, Riley, conveyed a much more complex reaction that mixed embarrassment and pity with sadness and loss.  The Will-Sid relationship is important to the play as a whole because it is a more extreme example of what all the men face – the necessity of forging bonds with strangers to strengthen their group’s ability to fight shadowed at the same time with the knowledge of these bonds’ fragility.  Death can take comrade at any time.

If Soulpepper had been able to cast Vimy with more members of its regular troupe, the production might have had an impact at least as great as the Blyth production.  As it is the Soulpepper production functions less as an involving drama and more as a timely reminder of a war that, contrary to its motto, was not a “war to end all wars”.  It forces us to consider the sobering view that the feeling of nationhood in Canada may have been forged more from communal sorrow than communal love of country.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (from top) Wesley French as Mike, Tim Dowler-Coltman as Sid, Sébastien Bertrand as Jean-Paul and T.J. Riley as Will; Christine Horne as Clare and Andrew Chown as Laurie. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.soulpepper.ca.