Stage show’s cop shop is tops, officer says
Toronto police inspector impressed by harrowing play Butcher’s realism
Inspector Chris Boddy has been with the Toronto Police Service for 26 years. Asked when he last went to the theatre, he’s momentarily stumped, but remembers seeing the Blue Man Group at the Panasonic Theatre on “the night of the flood” in the summer of 2005. It’s been a while, then. On the weekend, Boddy was back at the Panasonic to see Butcher, Nicolas Billon’s celebrated 2014 play back for an encore run in the Off-Mirvish season.
The play is set in a Toronto police station and one of its central characters, played by Tony Nappo, is a detective, so I invited Boddy, who’s currently based at the 11th Division on Davenport, to the theatre for his specialist perspective.
But for a good portion of the 90-minute show, I’m worried I may have made a big boo-boo. I saw Weyni Mengesha’s production in its initial run at the Theatre Centre, but had forgotten — or perhaps repressed — just how harrowing it becomes.
Its initial premise is that an elderly man (John Koensgen) is left at a police station with a butcher’s hook around his neck and the business card of a lawyer, Hamilton (Andrew Musselman), who doesn’t seem to know him. An interpreter (Miranda Calderon) is called in to help because the man can’t speak English. And then things go into full thriller mode.
As the plot moved from one shocking revelation to the next, Boddy let out a series of quiet “oh my Gods” and slightly stronger expletives. As we left the auditorium, he said his legs were “like jelly.”
“It seemed really real,” he explained. “It went from being a fun, jocular type of story to all of a sudden — holy cow, it got real. Potentially, the characters may not be walking out of that police station.”
So did this add up to a good time? “Oh yeah, it was great, all the twists and turns, for one thing.” The fact that he knew little about it going in also added to his enjoyment: “It was so off the wall; you don’t know what to expect next.”
Policing, investigation and forensics are massively popular subjects in film and television, but Boddy says he doesn’t “typically watch a lot of police shows. Because we know it’s not totally authentic. When you’re doing police work all day, you don’t always want to go home and watch it on TV.”
In this instance, though, he gives thumbs up for believability. As we headed onto Yonge St., we ran into Nappo, and Boddy complemented him on his expert handling of his prop gun and handcuffs. Boddy also said Yannik Larivée’s set of datedlooking desks, filing cabinets and computers was “very realistic. Nothing fancy, just bare bones.”
Billon sets up Nappo’s Detective Lamb as a jovial guy, cracking jokes that are rarely particularly funny (and that’s part of the overall gag). Boddy says this was recognizable: “I actually almost knew what he was going to say before he said it . . . Part of getting through the day a lot of the time is finding that humorous part.”
Also accurate is the depiction of the division’s coffee as being foul to the point of undrinkable: “Thankfully we have a lot of coffee shops we support in the city,” Boddy said wryly.
We attended the matinee performance on Sunday, the second of two previews before Tuesday night’s premiere. Looking around the near-full theatre before the show, Boddy wondered how all these people knew to come see it. As a theatre insider, I’m somewhat disarmed by this question. They’re probably Mirvish season subscribers, I offer weakly, or maybe fans and friends of Why Not Theatre, the indie company that originally produced the show.
I follow up on this later. “I had a great time the hour and a half we were there, but you’re either in that world or you’re not,” Boddy said. “I’d like to be in that world, but I don’t know how to get in.”
But surely he’s encountered Mirvish’s marketing campaign? “As we speak, I do recall seeing ads, but I guess you don’t really pay a lot of attention unless you’re looking for it.” This makes sense: we’re barraged by so much information every day.
In the lobby afterwards, as Boddy and I talked about one of the play’s grislier details, a gentleman joined in the conversation animatedly, saying that he saw this show at the Theatre Centre and was glad to be back for another look.
He flashed his Mirvish “I Love Plays” lapel badge before slipping back into the auditorium for the post-show talkback. Bridging the distance between folks like him and folks like Boddy is surely one of the biggest challenges for theatre these days. At the Theatre With . . . is an occasional series in which Karen Fricker brings people with specialist perspectives to performances. Butcher continues at the Panasonic through April 9. Go to mirvish.com, call 416-872-1212 or 1-800-461-3333.