Billy Bishop Goes to War by John Gray

Winner of the 1982 Governor-General’s Award for Drama

Winner of the 1982 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award

Winner of the 1981 Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Award

One of the country’s best known and most produced plays, Billy Bishop Goes to War is something of an aberration in published Canadian drama; it is in fact a musical that is published with lyrics and descriptions of the music. After doing some research I have found that, unlike most musicals, the producers/director of the show are responsible for the music, none is provided when the rights to the play are purchased. With that being said, the lyrics and musical descriptions work very well; they are key plot elements and are often used as turning points in the plot of the play. This book tells the story of legendary Canadian World War I pilot Billy Bishop and his rise to glory from a failing R.M.C. student to the toast of an empire.

Winning a number of awards, most notably the 1983 Governor-General’s Award for Drama, this play rose to prominence because of it’s style and structure, not because of any ground breaking plot or writing. Billy Bishop Goes to War is fundamentally a one-man show with a piano player providing backing vocals. I would think this would be very daunting for an actor, you would basically be responsible for memorizing a 102 page book. The majority of the play is Bishop, or whichever role he assumes, addressing the audience. This is very effective; even while reading the play you get a real sense of intimacy with the characters. When another role is assumed, the actor simply changes his voice or stance somewhat to show that he is taking on another personae. The staging in this production is very creative too; there are no huge elaborate sets or props: there is simply Bishop, a piano, and for the scenes where he is speaking about his time in the air, a model airplane he holds in his hand. In terms of both acting and staging, this play is theatrical minimalism at its best.

A few weeks ago CBC broadcast a new TV production of the play with John Gray and his collaborator Eric Peterson reuniting for the show. Even on the small-screen this was something impressive to watch, simply because of the range that is needed by the lead actor. The music is central to this piece, as I mentioned, it is used to shift the mood and also used as a leitmotif. This play definitely has it’s place in the Canadian dramatic tradition. Billy Bishop Goes to War is among a great renaissance of our national drama that was taking place in the early 80s along with other playwrites like Sharon Pollack, Judith Thompson, and George F. Walker. This book is certainly worth the read.

 

The Harps of God by Kent Stetson

Winner of the 2001 Governor-General’s Award for Drama

Winner of the 2001 Canadian Author’s Association’s Carol Bolt Award

I bought this book last year when I was working on collecting some of the plays that have won the Governor-General’s Award for Drama; I had no idea what it was about or anything about the author. I wanted to read another play this week and when I was going through my shelves the front cover caught my eye: a group of fisherman standing on an ice shelf. When I read the back of the cover and did some research this play really gained my interest; it is the true story of a group of sealers in 1914 who were stuck for 2 nights out on the open ice during a fierce snow storm. Kent Stetson, to my surprise, is a PEI-born dramatist who for a period of time ran the Charlottetown independent film company Points East Productions and did extensive work for the National Film Board. The Harps of God is, again, to my surprise, a verse drama. The is an incredible piece of dramatic art that really pushes the boundaries and experiments with both dialog and staging.

The play opens with a group of Newfoundland sealers on the ice in a hard blowing storm. We soon learn that the two ships that are in the area both think the other has picked up the men but they cannot confirm with each other as one ship has had its wireless transmitter removed to save money. As the story progresses their situation deteriorates more and more as the members of the crew start dropping like flies. These sealers circumstances force them to face a lot and naturally brings up and explores a variety of themes. Faith is the most important of these in my opinion; this idea of faith takes two different avenues: God and family. During the time on the ice when things seem to be at their worst the men start questioning their faith, the existence of something bigger, and why this could happen. Family is examined earlier in the play when there is some conflict amongst fathers and sons and the family tradition of sealing. The idea of breaking this tradition is seen almost as blasphemous as turning your back on God.

The dialog in this play is authentically Newfie. While it does take a few pages when you sit down to read this to fully assimilate the language, it really does make this piece what it is. It has all of the characteristics that you would expect of the Newfoundland fisherman: the letter H is often missing, the word ye instead of you, and just all around unorganized sentences. In addition to the speech the other element Stetson uses that makes this play unique is the actual staging of it. The set that would be used for this would consist of at least a two level, extremely wide, ice float. There would have to be a lot of work put into the sound department because of the unique wind noises that would be needed and fire would also be needed on the stage as well. Done right, on a large stage for instance, it would very impressive looking but I do not think this play would work well on a small stage community theatre. One of the earliest premiers of this play was actually done outdoors on a beach during a foggy and misty evening.

I have read a fair bit of Canadian drama but I haven’t ever really read a piece that blew me away. This play definitely did. The language and writing was poetic; molding a verse drama is a very big risk in contemporary theatre but the rhythm this creates combined with the dialog creates a play for the ages. The themes are eternal: faith, human survival, capitalism, and class divisions. The staging is experimental and incredibly vivid. I love literature of the north and The Harps of God will without a doubt take its place in that canon. Reading this play was an experience and I hope, at some point, that I will have the pleasure of seeing this produced.

 

On the Job by David Fennario

On the Job is a not one of Canada’s best known plays but it does occasionally creep its way into the odd Canadian Drama class here and there. I found a copy of this at a local used book store and after reading a few random pages I figured it was worth the $2. David Fennario is well known in the theatre community but not as well known in the general literary community. The Anglophone from Montreal’s most prominent moment likely came in 1990 with the production of his infamous The Death of René Lévesque at his home theatre, The Centaur. On the Job was his first play, produced in 1975, starring Hollywood mainstay Bruce Greenwood (Thirteen Days, I, Robot, Dinner for Schmucks), opening to rave reviews and eventually being produced on CBC.

This play moves very fast as a written work; you could likely get through the 110 pages in 2 hours. One thing that I found very strange about the written text was the lack of stage directions. Contemporary playwrights are prone to give very detailed directions to aid in their original vision coming to life. On the Job seems to take more minimalistic approach primarily only using entrances and exits for directions. This requires you, as either a reader or director, to really use your imagination. The dialog is very punchy and has a heavy staccato rhythm. Lines are rarely longer than 10 or so words.

Now for the actual story; the play is set in the shipping room of a dress factory on Christmas Eve in 1970. Thanks to a new manger, the crew is upset because they are not going to have the afternoon off like they have every other year. This eventually escalates into a druken wildcat strike with lots of laughs along the way. On the Job is ultimately a play looking at Canadian class structures of the time. You have the lower level workers, middle management, upper management, and the ownership. Each of these characters are written as their archetypal class representations and done so rather effectively.

One comment I do have is that as a play to be produced for live theatre it has not aged well. If I were a producer I would need to do quite a bit of updating; a young audience member would likely have no idea what Eaton’s is for instance. As a piece of literature capturing the mood at the tail end of the Sixties it is very effective. By turns funny, rhapsodic, sad, and brutally honest; On the Job is definitely worth the read but I would never produce it or see it live.

 

White Biting Dog by Judith Thompson

Winner of the 1984 Governor General’s Award for Drama

Canadian drama has always been something of an enigma. We have world class writers like Sharon Pollack, Michael Healey, Kent Stetson, George F. Walker, and the list goes on but it seems that our theatrical literature does not get the same attention as the great American and European dramatists. This is certainly not for lack of quality. On the plus side though over the past number of years more and more universities have been including Canadian Drama courses in their CanLit rotations and in 1981 the Canada Council for the Arts took the huge step of recognizing drama’s unique place in our literary culture by separating the Governor General’s Award for poetry and drama into their own categories.

One of our leading dramatists is without a doubt Judith Thompson. A two time winner of the GGs, countless Dora Awards, the Toronto Arts Award, a Canadian Authors Association Award, several Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Awards, an Officer of the Order of Canada, and Ms. Thompson was the first Canadian to receive the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Needless to say her resume is quite impressive. About a year ago I went through great trouble to obtain a copy of her second play White Biting Dog; eventually tracking it down on AbeBooks from a vendor in Vancouver. I finished the book about a week ago and this was the first book in a long time that after finishing the only thing I could think was “what just happened?” This is not a common thought for an English major who specialized in Canadian literature and loves drama.

Like most of Thompson’s plays White Biting Dog relies heavily on mystical realism and theatrical metaphor to drive the action. The play has five characters. Cape, the central figure, is a young former lawyer who is suicidal; the play gets rolling with him reflecting on his attempt to end his life and how he is saved by a white dog that sends him a message. The dog’s owner, Pony, ends up at Cape’s house (how, I am still not sure), a romance ensues and helps serve as the catalyst for the plays central conflicts. Cape lives with his father , Glidden, who is close to death from some kind of disease brought on by his addiction to rolling around in peat moss. Cape believes (according to the message from the dog) that if he reunites his parents, his father will live. Cape’s mother, Lomia, and her much younger boyfriend, Pascal, arrive at Glidden’s home after their apartment burns down. What ensues is a very fast paced web of lies built by Cape to bring his parents back together. It would be almost impossible to divulge anymore details without ruining the book for you.

This play examines a lot in a 104 page book or 2 hour stage production. By turns the play takes on the symbolism and meaning of death, love, suicide, sex, homosexuality, and the eternal bond that two people share no matter what circumstances have been dealt to them. White Biting Dog, probably more than any other Canadian book I have ever read, really explores the existentialism of human interactions and relationships. Now all this being said; this is an incredibly difficult book to read. Like a lot of plays it is written more so to be used as a script and production map, as opposed to a piece of literature to be read; the sentence structures and vernacular that is used is meant to guide the actors in their performances. There will be times you need re-read a page or monologue because you will sit there and shake your head wondering what’s going on.

White Biting Dog is Judith Thompson at her best. I hope that I one day have the opportunity to see a staged production of this piece. For those of you who wouldn’t know a Canadian playwright from a hole in the ground, well, you now know where to start.

 

Welcome to the Canadian Book Review V. 2.0!

Welcome to my new book review blog on Canadian Literature. As the Canadian radio legend Jian Ghomeshi put it a few years ago, as Canadians  we “love our beer, we love our hockey, and we love our arts.” It can be argued that literature is at the forefront of Canada’s artistic scene. Over the last 50 years there has been a great proliferation of Canadian literature (aka CanLit); I attribute this to two things. First, the emergence of the great triumvirate of contemporary CanLit: Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Michael Ondaatje; and secondly, and more recently, CBC Radio’s annual Canada Reads debates on the book that every Canadian should read.

Canadian writing can be traced back to the mid-late 1700s and narrative tales from the likes of Saukamapee, David Thompson, and Samuel Hearne and story writers like John Richardson and Frances Brooke. These visionaries planted the seeds for people like Catherine Parr Trail and Susanna Moodie who in turn planted the seeds for everyone from Sir Charles G.D. Roberts through Marina Endicott. Literature, like any other art, evolves, sometimes violently, but deep in its core CanLit has remained the same; themes of survival and isolation prevail. The detractors of Atwood and Frye will be up in arms with this assertion but I challenge you to name one piece of Canadian writing that these themes do not apply.

One of the biggest things I love about great writing is how small it makes you feel. When you read someone like Mordecai Richler or Leonard Cohen there is one thing, among many, you should feel, that’s jealousy. When I put down a great piece I feel jealous of the talent these men and women have that I will never posses. This is one of the most humbling yet inspiring feelings I have felt, and its what keeps me reaching for that next title on my bookshelf.

As some of you may know my previous blog, at http://www.thebookblog.net, focused on Canadian literature with the periodic interruption by an international piece, this review will be no different. I encourage you to read the books I review and comment on here or write to me; tell me what you think, I encourage you to disagree with me. So sit back and enjoy the ride.