Trudeau’s mystique explored in musical
Memory of former prime minister still enthralls Canada decades later
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau may have proven adept over the past couple of years at shaking off the long shadow of his famous father, but the mystique that is Pierre Elliott Trudeau still enthralls Canada. That’s clear from Just Watch Me — The Musical, a new show about Trudeau senior by local playwright Gord Carruth. It premieres until Oct. 10 in the Centrepointe Studio Theatre.
Focusing on the often-tumultuous period of Trudeau’s prime ministership from 1968 to 1984, the musical is largely hagiographical and poorly executed. But it does spark consideration of why Trudeau’s mystique endures three decades after he vanished from the public stage and 15 years after his death.
One reason made evident by the show is the heroic quality rightly or wrongly attached to the man who battled Quebec separatism, brooded late at night over his perceived failings as a man and as a leader, and blended condescension and wit with combativeness in his frequent tangles with the media.
“Just watch me,” he tells a reporter — as he actually did in an a 1970 CBC interview — when that reporter asks how far he’ll go in fighting the FLQ during the October Crisis, a fight that saw the imposition of the War Measures Act.
Heroism, or at least the perception of it, in a prime minister who also took a perverse delight in media scrums and who didn’t hesitate to veer off-message when so inclined, seems a distant and fond memory in today’s heavily scripted political landscape.
The War Measures Act in particular remains a flash point in Trudeau’s mystique. Its imposition was frightening, said audience member Debbie Murphy who was on the cusp of adolescence at the time. “It’s wrenching to remember, especially before our election coming in two weeks.” Wrenching, perhaps, but we’ve never forgotten.
The mystique was there from the start, rooted not just in the man but in the times. The show underscores Canada’s buoyant mood in the late 1960s, when social, cultural and other expectations loomed large, and the anxious, constrained years of post-war life felt like a tired skin finally being shed.
Trudeau, who had shown up in the House of Commons wearing sandals or an ascot while still an MP, seemed to combine the youthful unconventionality and irreverence so many of us sought with a sophistication to which we could but aspire. He was one of us but forever beyond our reach.
He made it “cool to be Canadian,” said Murphy.
Humbug, according to a crabbed Conservative MP at the start of the show. He calls PET a “cocky little upstart,” suggesting mean-spiritedness is endemic to the Conservatives’ DNA. Such smallness of spirit among their opponents makes both Pierre and Justin Trudeau — the latter having nostalgia among the party faithful on his side when he ran for leader — seem that much more appealing to us.
And maybe the other guys were just jealous of Trudeau’s legendary attractiveness to women from Liona Boyd and Barbra Streisand to excited housewives on the campaign trail.
“I’m learning about … Trudeaumania,” said Kathryn McLaren, 26, during the show’s intermission. “He was a bit more of a rock star than I realized.”
However, if a rock star emotes, at least in public, Trudeau was charismatic but reserved, his intellect and barbed wit shoring up the wall he maintained around himself even as his uncompromising stances and far-reaching actions, the National Energy Program among them, had opponents foaming at the mouth.
“Reason over passion,” he passionately believed, his customary cool putting him just beyond our reach, an inevitable candidate for mystique status. Also fascinating: his unpredictability or, as one of the show’s songs puts it, “With Trudeau you just never know.”
For Andrew Galligan, the 35-year-old who plays Trudeau in Just Watch Me, the man’s allure resides in his polarizing persona.
“We have a love/hate relationship with him. Repatriating the Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms define what it means to be Canadian. But many people blame continuing (federal overspending) on what he started. He’s substantial because he has that dual legacy.”
In fact, Carruth says he wrote the show because he’s always been fascinated by the dichotomy that was, and is, PET.
Other reasons for the continuing Trudeau mystique abound. They include his marriage to Margaret Sinclair. The union was disastrous as the show reminds us, but our sympathies still accrue to Trudeau, the single dad soldiering on.
“The mystique will always be there: the buckskin jacket, the canoeing,” said audience member Andrew Morgan, 65. “He put Canada on the map.”
Trudeau has been portrayed on stage before especially in the celebrated one woman play by the late Linda Griffiths called Maggie and Pierre which was a big hit in 1980. And of course, Trudeau was portrayed by Colm Feore in the 2002 miniseries Trudeau.
I’m learning about … Trudeaumania. He was a bit more of a rock star than I realized.