Musical unveils Canada’s sins
Children of God tells an important story about residential schools
Except for a couple of moments at the end of each act, Children of God might be the saddest musical you’ve ever seen. That shouldn’t be surprising given its subject: the Canadian residential school system. Or rather, one particular Catholic school and six of the First Nations children it tormented and left poorly educated.
Corey Payette, the show’s writer, composer and director, tells an important story about this dismal chapter of Canadian history in graphic and compelling ways. In the midst of Canada 150 celebrations, Children of God exposes the sins of a monstrous system and those who administered it, as well as the damage it did to generations of Aboriginal Peoples.
Payette’s songs don’t always raise the emotional stakes substantially but they increase the payoff often enough to rate this experiment in musical theatre a significant success.
The central character, Tom (Herbie Barnes), was shipped off to the school when he was four. We meet him in middle age, struggling with a raft of problems, living with his mother (Cathy Elliott) after the breakup of his marriage and awkwardly reconnecting with Wilson (Kevin Loring), a fellow schoolmate who has superficially made it by denying his aboriginality.
Flash back to the school, where the boys along with Wilson’s brother, Vincent (Aaron M. Wells), are overseen by an insidiously hypocritical priest, Father Christopher (Michael Torontow). On the girls’ side are Joanna (Kim Harvey), Elizabeth (Kaitlyn Yott) and Tom’s older sister, Julia (Cheyenne Scott), a chronic runaway. A nun, Sister Bernadette (Trish Lindstrom), is their jailer ... er, teacher.
The school is much like a jail or torture chamber. (Jeff Harrison’s lighting makes the open sky and clouds of Marshall McMahen’s set look like the dark walls of a dungeon.) The food, the children sing, is “slop.” Brother and sister risk harsh punishment just to speak with each other. Even minor infractions produce beatings. “Discipline needs to be enforced,” the priest insists. Among his favourite methods are to strip and hose the child, no food for a week and solitary confinement.
The children (played mostly to excellent effect by adult actors) show remarkable resilience under the circumstances — up to a point. They laugh and find ways to circumvent the system while constantly fantasizing about their parents coming to get them. “God only knows how much we take,” they sing. Ironically, the priest and nun sing the same lyrics, feeling themselves to be the real victims.
Some of the children are able to take only so much in the end, especially in light of a horrific sexual crime. “Can’t you hear me crying in the night, Lord,” sings Scott, whose Julia stands out in an exceptionally strong, committed cast. But this god appears to be deaf to these children.
A few other solos are as effective as Julia’s: Sister Bernadette’s lament Their Spirits Are Broken and Tom’s Wonderland (“This ain’t no wonderland!”). But the music only becomes transformational, and tragedy only turns to hope, when the cello, piano, guitar and viola accompaniment and Western song structure are replaced by First Nations drumming and indigenous ensemble singing.
This results in a beautiful and very powerful moment of triumphant solidarity between the stage and audience at the end, the kind of reconciliation this country desperately needs but hasn’t yet earned.