Veterans give play thumbs up
Billy Bishop Goes to War spurs seniors to talk of their Second World War memories
It was spontaneous, joyful and loud. The ovation ticket holders gave Canadian war veterans as they entered the lobby of the Young Centre for the Performing Arts on a recent evening.
There to see Soulpepper’s production of Billy Bishop Goes to War, the former soldiers who spent their youth in battles across the ocean were delighted by the welcome.
“I pretty near cried,” admits John Hall, 96, from Saskatchewan, who was a tank operator with the 6th Armoured Regiment in the Second World War. “When people started clapping, it was heartfelt.”
Like the aging Bishop in the play (portrayed by 70-year-old Eric Peterson), the veterans from Sunnybrook Hospital’s veterans wing wondered if their contributions to peace were being forgotten.
“I was very touched. They were younger, but we were applauded for being in a war that had to be,” says Stanley Dinney, 95, from Moncton, N.B., who served in the Royal Canadian Air Force.
The vets were well-versed in the story of First World War flying ace Billy Bishop, who was said to have shot down more enemy planes than any other pilot. The Owen Sound, Ont., native was a hero to many Canadians for signing up when the Second World War came calling.
“He was a legend in our family,” says Mary Prescott, a Hamilton native whose second cousin flew with Bishop. Prescott herself, now 91, sang and danced for the troops in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps and married the stage manager of the Canadian Army Show. Toronto’s Mary Jarvis, a driver in the CWAC, married an artillery veteran when she “remet” him at home.
For many in Jarvis’ war, it was a time of travel, adventures and friendships as well as death; they had enlisted at the first opportunity.
“We were18,19, 21: we had no inhibitions, we were ready to go,” Jarvis, now 93, recalls.
Hamilton’s Mackenzie (Mac) Joyner, 94 and once a navigator in Lancaster bombers, saw the play 30 years ago and it seemed pretty much word for word as he remembered it. The props were different (Peterson wields a toy plane now where he used to “fly” around the stage inside the cockpit of a fighter) and Joyner was struck by the drama of a scene acted out with the shadow from a flashlight.
John Ferris, 92, a Toronto native who was an air gunner with the RCAF, saw the play 40 years ago when Peterson was a “hippie” of 30.
“It’s a remarkable presentation of two men over three hours of talking and music, without ever looking at (their lines on paper). Fantastic.”
All agreed Peterson’s memory was formidable, although the actor laughed off the compliment in a post-show visit with the veterans, telling them he “ad libbed” if he forgot the words.
Best of all was seeing the story of war told from the viewpoint of a Canadian who had gone overseas, like them, and returned to live a life in peace.
Peterson said that as he has aged, so has the interpretation of the story he and John Gray have told numerous times over the years.
“I’m now an old man looking back at life and the incredible events in it,” Peterson said.
This differs from the first incarnation, in which his performance was about “the thrill of being a young man and going to war. It was provocative to talk about war in the theatre: playing with guns and machinery.”
When talking to veterans who come to the play, Peterson said they’re often moved to talk about their own war experience. Billy Bishop Goes to War tells them “you have a place in the world.”
Gray, who created the play with Peterson, including the music and songs, left the world of theatre and became a novelist, based in Vancouver. Named after the deceased best friend of his father, who also served in the RCAF, Gray said the play is now somewhat remote to him, “like it’s a couple of incarnations ago.”
But he hesitates to say Billy Bishop will be put to rest, something the team said seven years ago when the play was last at Soulpepper, directed by Ted Dykstra.
“I think that’s it. I like writing novels, living in Vancouver with my cat. I’m 70.”
As for the future? “One never knows.”