Up To Low takes us back at the NAC
Doyle’s Up to Low touches down at National Arts Centre, Lynn Saxberg writes
If you see Brian Doyle in tears when Up To Low opens next week, don’t be alarmed.
The Chelsea, Que.-based author, who’s in his 80s, wrote the original 1982 novel that was turned into a play by director Janet Irwin a few years ago, and is about to be remounted at the National Arts Centre. The story is based on a tale Doyle recalls from his childhood.
“I’m just so charmed by it. I’m almost haunted,” Doyle said in a recent interview, referring to Irwin’s adaptation. “Jan was so faithful to the language, which was very simple but rhythmic stuff, and she turned it into something special.
“I go and see it and I don’t even think of it as mine. I feel almost detached from it. The first time I saw it, I cried. People were wondering what was wrong with me but that’s the power she put into it.”
Doyle grew up in Ottawa’s Lowertown neighbourhood, but spent (and continues to spend) his summers at a family cabin on the Gatineau River. His great-great grandfather left Ireland during the Great Famine and settled in the Gatineau Hills in the mid-1800s. Irish immigrants were drawn to the isolation of the Gatineaus, despite difficult conditions for farming. The soil was thin, the slopes were steep and rocks dotted the fields — but there was no one around to persecute them.
“They went up there to be left alone,” said Doyle, who’s been a full-time resident of the area for about two decades. “They never paid taxes or anything until the 1900s or beyond. Most of them were illiterate farmers, not very much the kind of people who believe in authority.”
Doyle’s father always had a story, and young Brian was a good listener. One tale that stuck with him involved the death of a neighbour up river, and the relatives who decided to take the body to Low in a rowboat for a proper burial. That madcap trek was the starting point for the novel, and is part of the play.
When Doyle originally wrote the book more than 35 years ago, he was teaching at Glebe Collegiate and wanted to encourage his own children, who were around 10 or 11 at the time, to read. Up To Low was one of four young-adult novels he wrote with his kids in mind.
Set in the Gatineaus in the 1950s, the play features a cast of eight actors and a score performed live by three musicians, including Chelsea-based singer-songwritercomposer Ian Tamblyn, who is the music director. With the exception of the lead role of Tommy the 12-year-old narrator (now played by Brandon McMurtry-Howlett), it’s the same cast and crew that first mounted the play at Arts Court in 2015, where it was a big hit.
“We received the ultimate compliment,” quips Doyle, casting back to that sold-out run. “We caught people sneaking in because they couldn’t get a ticket.”
The new production has changed a bit, adds Tamblyn, noting that it’s been tightened to one act instead of two, and designed to engage 800 people instead of a few dozen.
With three of his own plays set in the Gatineaus, capturing the spirit of the area in music is second nature to him. “Part of it is, quite honestly, spending a lot of time in the Hills, driving Martindale Road, talking to people and just immersing myself in the atmosphere,” Tamblyn said.
Tamblyn has lived in Chelsea for 45 years. For any longtime resident of the area, the play is sure to fan nostalgia for the good old days before the influx of city folks.
“It’s looking in the rear-view mirror,” says Tamblyn. “The play is set around 1950 but the references are back to when the Paugan dam was built, around 1926. That was a whole other world.”
When Doyle was growing up and visiting the cabin in the ’40s, there was no electricity, running water or tractors in the area. Farmers used horses to plow. “We went to bed at dark, got up at dawn,” he says. “It was a simple life.”
In addition to electricity and running water, there are fire hydrants and sidewalks in the village of Chelsea. But the biggest difference may be that the area is now regarded as an exclusive enclave for the wealthy.
“For the first 20 years I lived there, I paid $100 rent in a little cottage,” Tamblyn recalls. “It’s now a well-off community, and some of the original folks have been shuffled off to the side. There are new demands for a more urban lifestyle in the country, and in some cases, the demands of the landed gentry are different than those of the people who have lived there for generations.”
As for the likelihood that Doyle may be moved to cry, Tamblyn has a simple explanation: “He’s Irish. He tears up easily.”
I go and see it and I don’t even think of it as mine. I feel almost detached from it. The first time I saw it, I cried.