Poetic cool and dark humour
MATT RADZ, The Gazette
Kevin Kerr's play about a small Saskatchewan town during the First World War, Unity (1918) is one of those quiet sensations of Canadian theatre, like David Young's Inexpressible Island or Kent Stetson's The Harps of God.
First seen here in French nearly four years ago at Espace Go, Unity (1918) had its Montreal English-language premiere Thursday night. The Persephone company production, directed by Gabrielle Soskin, is running at Monument National until. Oct. 8. No one interested in Canadian theatre, strong and true, can afford to miss it.
First staged in Vancouver in 2001, Unity (1918), like Young's and Stetson's plays, dramatizes life-altering historical events. The form of expression, an immediately familiar mixture of northern poetic cool and dark humour, represents a unique vision. It might be perceived as our own distinctive style, if these serious, well-researched plays that tell us something important about our past were produced a little more often. All three dramas are about survival, although practically no one gets to live happily ever after in Unity, where an entire generation of young people is erased by the Great War and its deadlier-still aftermath, the global Spanish flu epidemic that killed between 20 million and 50 million earthlings.
Kerr's play draws its narrative power from a structure that requires the actors' voices to harmonize and counterpoint each other in a poignant dirge for a generation perishing just as it's about to flower into adulthood.
Poetry can be tricky on stage. On opening night, the uneven cast was still trying to get in tune with each other and the audience, a resolute struggle that made Kerr's text sound wordy just as it wanted to be at its most profound.
While a little less dramatic activity at the switchboard might be called for, Soskin receives several outstanding performances from her young actors, recent graduates of various Montreal theatre schools.
Kathleen Stavert's Beatrice does most of the heavy lifting here as the play's symbol of fresh innocence and its narrator. As Hart, Aaron Turner delivers a typically strong characterization in the play's other major role of a symbolically blind soldier just back from the front in Europe, unknowingly packing the deadly flu virus in his army-issue blanket. Stephanie Chapman-Baker invests her role of Suna, the Icelandic-immigrant undertaker, with just the right touch of off-handed sang froid.
Unity (1918) by Kevin Kerr, presented by Persephone Productions, directed by Gabrielle Soskin, until Oct. 7 at Monument National, 1182 St. Laurent Blvd.; 514-871-2224.
[email protected]
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007
Kevin Kerr's play about a small Saskatchewan town during the First World War, Unity (1918) is one of those quiet sensations of Canadian theatre, like David Young's Inexpressible Island or Kent Stetson's The Harps of God.
First seen here in French nearly four years ago at Espace Go, Unity (1918) had its Montreal English-language premiere Thursday night. The Persephone company production, directed by Gabrielle Soskin, is running at Monument National until. Oct. 8. No one interested in Canadian theatre, strong and true, can afford to miss it.
First staged in Vancouver in 2001, Unity (1918), like Young's and Stetson's plays, dramatizes life-altering historical events. The form of expression, an immediately familiar mixture of northern poetic cool and dark humour, represents a unique vision. It might be perceived as our own distinctive style, if these serious, well-researched plays that tell us something important about our past were produced a little more often. All three dramas are about survival, although practically no one gets to live happily ever after in Unity, where an entire generation of young people is erased by the Great War and its deadlier-still aftermath, the global Spanish flu epidemic that killed between 20 million and 50 million earthlings.
Kerr's play draws its narrative power from a structure that requires the actors' voices to harmonize and counterpoint each other in a poignant dirge for a generation perishing just as it's about to flower into adulthood.
Poetry can be tricky on stage. On opening night, the uneven cast was still trying to get in tune with each other and the audience, a resolute struggle that made Kerr's text sound wordy just as it wanted to be at its most profound.
While a little less dramatic activity at the switchboard might be called for, Soskin receives several outstanding performances from her young actors, recent graduates of various Montreal theatre schools.
Kathleen Stavert's Beatrice does most of the heavy lifting here as the play's symbol of fresh innocence and its narrator. As Hart, Aaron Turner delivers a typically strong characterization in the play's other major role of a symbolically blind soldier just back from the front in Europe, unknowingly packing the deadly flu virus in his army-issue blanket. Stephanie Chapman-Baker invests her role of Suna, the Icelandic-immigrant undertaker, with just the right touch of off-handed sang froid.
Unity (1918) by Kevin Kerr, presented by Persephone Productions, directed by Gabrielle Soskin, until Oct. 7 at Monument National, 1182 St. Laurent Blvd.; 514-871-2224.
[email protected]
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2007