What is a classic play? Does Canada have any?

Plus one recommendation and one meh

First an update from illiberalism: PEN America is tearing itself apart. That is, its members are attacking the leadership for the insufficiently anti-Israeli statements about the ongoing war in Israel/Palestine, and argue that its current mandate is not enough. PEN should instead be taking unequivocal positions on international conflicts and even using certain words in its statements. The cry-bullies are demanding that the word genocide be used, or they’ll keep throwing toys out of the pram. What Yascha Mounk described as “the short march through the institutions” has come for PEN. I expect the Canadian copycat activism can not be far behind; keeping an eye out for the next PEN Canada newsletter. Many good points in that above linked piece in the Atlantic, including whether the overwhelming advocacy for the progressive free speech causes over the years has inched the organization into a corner from which it will be hard to come out. And yes, the Charlie Hebdo gala boycott was not a blip but a harbinger. PEN, be more like FIRE.

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Two quick reviews:

Thumbs up for Studio 180’s Four Minutes Twelve Seconds written by a Brit James Fritz (and lightly adapted for Toronto), playing on Tarragon’s smaller stage. It’s one of those talkie plays where the sets and costumes don’t really matter—and director Mark McGrinder only bothered with a few basics—as much as the text, and keeping it taut and efficient and its escalations credible. The drama starts off as being about a middle class couple whose son is bullied by the brothers of his ex girlfriend over a revenge porn video that he is presumed to have posted online after they broke up. She is also accusing him of assault, something that his micromanaging mother refuses to believe could ever happen until she watches the video. The girl’s family is lower down the societal ladder from our first generation middle class pair, and they are less educated and minority ethnic (“she’s too Scarborough”)—and mistrustful of the legal system and prone to taking justice into their own hands. What at a glance appears to be a play about sexual assault in the age of smart phone camera reveals itself slyly as a play about class and social capital—and what a thin veneer the rule of law and the state monopoly of violence cast over the millennia of an-eye-for-an-eye beastliness. Are the impersonal laws equally impersonal to the comfortable and the afflicted? Should a promising young student have his life prospects destroyed due to one foolish act? How can the aggrieved girl ever get justice for what was done to her—and does she have any agency left in the situation? But wait, there are further twists on the story, and both the father and the mother who believe that they unconditionally love the rapey young man will be tested in ways that will shatter their self-understanding and redefine their marriage. The assault aspect of the story returns centre stage as we discover that the person who uploaded the video completely misread the assault in it as a normal sexual act. It’s Sartre’s No Exit meets Hunger Games, and all that so the pampered loser could go to McGill. Hell hath no fury like the bourgeoisie doing what it can to ensure a friction-free life for its children. You will talk about this show long after the curtain call.

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A scene from A Public Reading… (Photo © Dahlia Katz)

Thumbs down for the latest Soulpepper offering with a tediously clever title of A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney by a hot American playwright (Toronto theatres really love hot American playwrights) Lucas Hnath. The form is the most interesting thing in the play, crafted as an actual table read of a Walt Disney-authored script about his life. His brother, his daughter and her husband also have their scripts and all four speak in elliptical sentences, repetitions, interruptions, hesitations, punctuated by Walt’s incessant “cut to” didascalies. The way cut-to is used is probably the most interesting aspect of the play: he uses it to speed up, censor, avoid, frame. With this hyper-crafted form which needs to be delivered musically the play will hold your attention for a while, until you realize there is no escape from Walt’s boardroom. You mean to tell me one of the most powerful entertainment CEOs of the twentieth century wasn’t a great parent? He busted unions and cooked up megalomaniac plans? Wow, shocking. What else you’re going to tell me, that the Pope might be Catholic? There’s a lateness to this play, a vintage style in every sense, as if someone eager to say something about American corporate culture decided to set the story in Billy Wilder’s The Apartment. If you must do a play about a CEO, I’d endure one about Bezos or Elon which would actually tell me something about power today. Or do one about a Lockheed Martin or Philip Morris CEO or the Sackler family. But Walt? For all his dreadfulness, Walt was far from a tragic Shakespearean baddie. Some CEOs are disagreeable, guys, and the most ruthless ones sometimes achieve great success. Sometimes, gasp, they even helm companies that produce entertainment beloved by the generations of families. OK. Maybe someone somewhere still needs to hear that.

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The Star had a well-meaning but half-cooked piece the other day about the lack of celebrity playwrights in Canada and our eagerness to put on shows by American counterparts. There is an important issue buried in there: do we have classical plays that we will be returning to over and over? We can be more modest and ask, how many new plays see at least one other production? (Three would be to ask too much.) I polled the three critics who have seen everything, and I mean everything that premiered during their lifetimes, Lynn Slotkin, Glenn Sumi and Paula Citron, and this is what they suggested.

Kim’s Convenience by Ins Choi (of course)

Drawer Boy by Michael Healey (yes!)

I, Claudia by Kristen Thomson

The New Canadian Curling Club by Marc Crawford

I insisted on Linda Griffiths’ Maggie and Pierre, they did not object

Quiet in the Land by Anne Chislett

The Rez Sisters by Thomson Highway

Les belles soeurs by Michel Tremblay

The Crackwalker - Judith Thompson

10 Lost Years by Cedric Smith, George Luscombe and Jack Winter

Suburban Motel, George F Walker

Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang by Mordecai Richler

Love and Human Remains by Brad Fraser

The Farm Show edited by Ted Jones/Theatre Passe Muraille

Elizabeth Rex by Timothy Findlay

The League of Nathans and After the Orchard by Jason Sherman

Salt-Water Moon by David French

Vigil by Morris Panych

The Unplugging - Yvette Nolan

East of Berlin - Hannah Moscovitch

Fortune and Men’s Eyes by John Herbert

Waiting for a Parade by John Murrell

Tectonic Plates and The Seven Streams of the River OTA by Robert Lepage

The Melville Boys by Norm Foster

Now to see if any of these will return anywhere (I‘ve only seen a fraction). Most have been published and can at least be read. A couple of them exist in a cinematic iteration. Tectonic Plates is also a film by Peter Mettler available on Vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/tectonicplates

Have you seen any of these and what would be your candidates? If any titles come to mind, the comments are open.