Historical play falls for nostalgia
Billy Bishop Goes to War (out of 4) By John MacLachlan Gray with Eric Peterson, directed by Ted Dykstra. Through Aug. 5 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank House Lane. soulpepper.ca and 416-866-8666
As part of its celebration of Canada 150, and while much of the theatre’s energy is focused on its New York season, Soulpepper is reviving its revival of a play written in 1978 about 1914.
With respect to the important place of Billy Bishop Goes to War in Canadian theatre history, and to its beloved creators John Gray and Eric Peterson (here reprising their much-reprised onstage roles), this production is at so many removes from the play’s original context that its capacity for critical comment has drained away and what’s left is self-regarding sentimentality.
For the uninitiated (which up until this viewing included me): this is a two-man play with music about the birth of a certain version of Canadian nationalism. Billy, a half-hearted hot mess of a soldier from Owen Sound (and of course, a real-life historical figure), goes off to “fight the Hun” in the First World War and discovers, quite despite himself, extraordinary capacities as a fighter pilot.
When his benefactress, Lady St. Helier, plucks him from a London military hospital and urges him to better himself because he’s a “gifted Canadian,” the ironic point is that he’s shown no gifted qualities whatsoever; she taps him because of shared allegiances with his privileged father.
He transforms into a flying ace but, at the height of his success, is held back by the British top brass from advancing any further, lest his kill rate eclipse that of homegrown heroes (he flies again and breaks records anyway).
Gray and Peterson link Bishop’s — and by extension Canada’s — success in foreign wars to an internalized sense of colonized inadequacy. Part of an ongoing Canadian sense of impostor syndrome, it’s implied, comes from the fact that this heroism was forged in someone else’s conflict.
As Gray recounts in the preface to a published version of the play, such musings about Canadianness were unfashionable in the late 1970s; regional theatres were then interested in more cosmopolitan fare. But the enthusiasm of Canadian and international audiences for the piece defied expectations.
Forty years later, there is potential perhaps to frame a revision of this play within current debates about the nature of warfare and Canadian identity.
The choice here, however, is to treat the play itself, and its creators, as history to be venerated. Ted Dykstra’s production, which premiered in 2009, has Peterson wandering around the stage in pyjamas, lifting drop cloths off packing cases emblazoned with the names of theatres where the play has been performed.
Thus the context is nostalgia for the play’s previous successes: this seems a betrayal of the creators’ original, culturally critical agenda, but one in which they enthusiastically participate.
The production demands a lot of Peterson, who voices over 15 other characters as well as Bishop. His zest for the task is winning, but his performance at times loses focus: he takes numerous pauses within phrases as well as between them. Unclear spoken diction is frequently a concern.
Gray plays piano and sings his own lightly satirical songs, often joined by Peterson; this is the most entertaining part of the show.
This is the third time that Soulpepper has brought back Dykstra’s production, so clearly there is a Toronto audience for this nostalgic show.
But, particularly in the context of debates around Canada 150, its engagement with Canada and colonialism feels painfully out of date.