STYLE & STANCE
Scandal & Rebellion Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Toronto’s celebration of Canada’s 150th isn’t all ducks and Drakes. Down in the Distillery District, the company known as VideoCabaret have been reviving and revising their strip- cartoon national epic whose overall title is The History of the Village of the Small Huts. Their birthday offering is entitled Confederation, and it’s divided into two parts, now playing at alternate performances. Part One is called Confederation and Riel, Part Two Scandal and Rebellion.
This time around I have only seen Part Two, but that’s enough to confirm that VideoCab’s style and stance remain unchanged. The style is brilliant: a succession of short scenes, brightly lit against a black background, with a small corps of performers, garishly wigged and spectacularly costumed, achieving the impossible as they switch, seemingly on the instant, from one character to the next. In the present company there are eight actors, playing some 80 roles.
As for the stance, that is best described in a program note written by the cycle’s author- director, Michael Hollingsworth. It describes Canadian history as “a never-ending drama of hideous wrongs, inexcusable cockups, noble dreams, tragic failures, and hilarious hopes.” You get the picture.
In theatrical practice this means that politicians, who have most of the action, are portrayed as scoundrels or buffoons or both. Scandal and Rebellion, which covers the years 1871 to 1882 (Confederation and Riel accounts for 1861-1870) hits this popular mark from its opening moment which finds Liberal leader Alexander Mackenzie, hoarse and hairy, inveighing against the demon rum. This should mean that he has no chance against the incumbent Sir John A. Macdonald who looks and sounds as if he has never refused a drink in his life. He is unseated though when the opposition exposes some financial skulduggery, related to the nascent Canadian Pacific Railway, that not even he can live down. But time is a notorious healer, and on this occasion quite a fast one, as he and his Conservatives are soon back in power. And on things merrily go.
Richard Clarkin has a high old time as John A., and Greg Campbell only a slightly lesser one as t he i ntemperately t emperate Mackenzie. Joining these troupe veterans, and fitting right in, is Kevin Bundy, best known for his work with all three of our major classical companies. His prime role is that of Edward Blake, the Liberals’ ineffably and ineffectually snobbish No. 2. Emerging as the real villain of the piece is Donald Smith, apparatchik extraordinaire, snakily determined that the railway shall be built and that he himself shall profit by it. Richard Alan Campbell, who may be the definitive VidCab actor, brings off the trick of being obsequious and intransigent at the same time. He rubs his hands while delivering the coup de grace; in order to move its troops to defeat the rebellious First Nations, the government will need trains. The play ends, or almost, with Smith driving in the last spike of the CPR. ( Am I the only one who, every time those initials were spoken, found myself thinking of something altogether different?)
I have no intellectual quarrel with the show’s cynicism. Dramatically, though, it becomes monotonous, especially as the brevity of the scenes means that none of the characters can have any depth. Some of them are actually around too much; the married life of Wilfrid Laurier, who seems to fancy the wife of his best friend, adds nothing to the history and makes the play’s first half go uncharacteristically slack.
It’s a relief when we leave Scandal and move on to Rebellion — Part Two of Part Two, if you like — because here the creators, Hollingsworth and his co-director Deanne Taylor, find some characters they can respect. These, as you might expect, are the doomed leaders of the Cree. Clarkin, in a double, remarkable even by VideoCabaret standards, plays implacable War Chief Wandering Spirit, finding a nobility in bloodthirstiness. As the pacific Chief Big Bear, who knows how hopeless the odds are, Kat Letwin is both dignified and moving.
Which leaves us with Louis Riel who, as a Métis, stands between the two cultures and accordingly speaks i n both the show’s voices; he’s both mocked and admired. This part of the story finds him first on the defensive, in exile south of the border, and then on the attack, leading a parallel ill- fated revolt. Crossgender casting reinforces the ambiguity; Michaela Washburn is rather remarkable in the role, poised on the edge of the ridiculous but never toppling into it. There’s a calmly questioning air about her, notably when consigned to an asylum and even more when released from it.
VideoCabaret operated f or years in the backroom of a pub, the Cameron House, whose tiny stage was made to look like a three- dimensional TV screen. They achieved the same effect when they moved into the Tank House, one of the smallest spaces in Soulpepper’s Young Centre. They’ve now been promoted, or at any rate moved, into that complex’s second- largest theatre, the Michael Young. The stage now looks like a stage rather than a screen, so some of the style’s audacity has gone. So too has some of the speed; with more space to cover, the actors now need more time to hit their marks: probably only a fraction more but the lag does tell.
We no l onger marvel quite so much at their agility; though the way in which, once a scene is under way, they move from one shaft of light to another, still inspires awe. As, for that matter, does the way in which the shafts follow them; Andrew Dollar, the lighting designer, is also the stage manager, and you can see why he would have to be.
Confederation Parts 1 and II are in repertory at the Young Centre through Aug. 19.