BEHIND THE SCENES OF CONFEDERATION
VideoCabaret’s two-part production a compelling retelling of Canadian history,
In 1982, amidst the spectacle of Constitutional repatriation, Torontobased indie theatre artist Michael Hollingsworth realized he knew painfully little about this country’s history.
The over 20-play cycle that resulted, The History of the Village of the Small Huts, has become its own improbable saga — a satirical retelling of Canadian history that Hollingsworth, co-director Deanne Taylor and an evolving group of artists and artisans keep on retooling, presenting and revising, under the aegis of their company VideoCabaret.
Since 2013, Soulpepper has provided a summer home for VideoCab’s performances.
This year’s pair of offerings contribute to the pageantry and debate around Canada 150: running in repertory, they cover the Confederation period, from 1861 through to the completion of the transcontinental railroad and the execution of Louis Riel in 1885.
What has made the Small Huts project beloved of Canadian theatre artists and audiences alike is its unique style of presentation and the commitment to an amazing level of skill and craftsmanship from all the artists and technicians involved.
The action is played in a big rectangular frame and the theatre is profoundly dark, as if we’re looking at a big live TV.
The performers wear whiteface, bold makeup and some brilliantly exaggerated wigs by Alice Norton (given the period, there’s many a mighty mutton chop on display).
Scenes are short and the text is to-the-point and witty: “I am John A. Macdonald. Joint premier of the Canadas. I intend to be prime minister of the whole caboodle.
“Why? Because it’s 1861,” says Richard Clarkin’s Macdonald as the first play opens.
The finely-tuned relationship between Andrew Dollar’s lighting design and Hollingsworth and Taylor’s direction is crucial. Each scene begins with performers caught in precise beams of light and having them move from one lit point to another on stage is a way to advance time, land a punch line and nuance character.
Under that lighting, the colours and textures of Astrid Janson and Melanie McNeill’s lavish costumes glow. Projections by Adam Barrett and Brad Harley economically give locations.
Brent Snyder and Richard Feren’s music and sound provide nearlynonstop underscoring.
The accumulation of visual, aural and embodied elements gestures back to19th-century melodrama and sets the context for a particular, heightened acting style.
Playing this way requires serious chops: great comic timing; the capacity to create clear physical and vocal interpretations of characters and to switch quickly between them; and to remain unflappable onstage when one imagines all manner of mayhem is going on behind the scenes.
There is great pleasure in watching VideoCab veterans slide into comic characterizations such as Richard Alan Campbell’s rabid Orange Lodge Grandmaster J.C. Schultz, Greg Campbell’s poncey Sir GeorgeÉtienne Cartier, Linda Prystawska’s buxom Emilie Lavergne and Clarkin’s acute — when he’s not saucedup — Macdonald.
Relative company newcomers are equally strong: Kevin Bundy as the Irish-Canadian politician D’Arcy McGee, Jamie Cavanagh as the brilliant but ascetic Wilfrid Laurier and Kat Letwin as Laurier’s long-suffering wife Zoe (in every instance I’m selecting one of the numerous roles each company member plays).
The standout performance here is Michaela Washburn as Riel: this is the most fleshed-out character across the two plays, who we follow from exceptional schoolboy to lapsed seminarian, to visionary rebel leader, to exile, to rebel leader again and on to the gallows.
Washburn’s cocked head, set jaw and thrust-out chest signal from the beginning Riel’s confidence and determination, but also hint at obsessional qualities and a tendency toward vanity.
Fighting against the systemic denial of Métis land ownership and rights, the production suggests, is a big part of what led to Riel’s struggle with mental illness.
Confederation I and II intersects with a particularly fraught moment in the relationship between Canada’s Indigenous and settler cultures, and it is significant that Washburn, who plays Riel, is herself Métis.
While the production casts a cynical eye on the corruption, greed and side deals with big business behind the scenes of Confederation, its presentation of First Nations and Métis plot lines and characters is notably respectful: Plains Cree Chiefs Big Bear (Letwin) and Wandering Spirit (Clarkin) are given significant stage time and presented as conscientious and heroic.
While it’s exciting to see a female actor get her teeth into a meaty role such as Riel, cross-gender casting pretty much goes one way — all three female actors play some male characters, but by my account, there’s only one small female role (a violent nun) played by a man.
This is likely an attempt on VideoCab’s part to compensate for the male domination of these historical stories, but there was unfulfilled potential here to scramble representational codes in ways that further contribute to the production’s satirical commentary on dominant narratives.
Because Canada, like time and history, keeps moving on. How VideoCab continues to navigate its paradoxical position as longestablished gadfly on the city’s cultural scene is a gripping tale that continues to unfold.