JAKE’S GIFT OFFERS TOUCHING LOOK AT WAR’S SACRIFICE

Jake’s Gift is a simple play on the surface with much complexity within.

It’s bare-bones theatre in a way, a show in which one performer plays all the parts on a largely bare stage with nothing more elaborate going on than a few lighting changes.

The magic comes with what Julia Mackey does as the writer and performer.

She transforms herself into several characters, mainly a 10-yearold French girl and an elderly Canadian veteran of the Second World War. Jake never wanted to go back to Juno Beach after D-Day, but finds himself there for the 60th anniversary. Isabelle is terribly excited about the commemoration and the chance to meet her country’s liberators.

What follows is a series of conversations as the child, with her disarming innocence and irrepressible curiosity, draws Jake out. You have to suspend some disbelief that such a long and detailed interaction would really take place, but it’s worth it.

Mackey has been doing the show for a decade, and it shows in the polish. In fact, her opening night performance at Persephone Theatre was as flawless as a rare gem. With direction by Dirk Van Stralen, it’s quite remarkable seeing her make the sudden transitions between little girl and old man, her voice going from squeaky to gruff, her body giving over to Jake’s frailty and arthritis. You want to help him as he struggles to put his medal-covered blazer on.

There are interesting, must-be-true details, like the unsophisticated reason Jake and his two brothers had for enlisting — they wanted new boots — and the French girl’s sense of the solemn duty of grooming the graves of the young men who never saw home again.

The reason Jake finally returned to Normandy forms the understated climax of the play.

The gift in the title, meanwhile, is many things: One he received from his new little friend, one that is mailed to her some time after he returns to Canada. But above all, perhaps, it’s the opportunity the old veteran had to see, specifically and vividly, what he and his brothers were fighting and dying for. Not every soldier is afforded such a privilege.

Jake’s Gift is a touching, gentle way to reflect on that profound sacrifice.