Up to Low comes home at last to the NAC!
Ottawa to Wakefield in 1950 was a bumpy road covered with pebbles that used to make the car shake until the fenders came loose. Such was the trip made by local cottage goers into the Francophone Pontiac but nothing as harrowing or as colourful as writer Bryan Doyle suggests . His memories are piled high with everyone’s stories filtered through the expanding imagination of 15 year old Tommy, producing an epic tale right out of western Quebec where even the vicious black flies have a role as the great villains of the plot, thanks to the opening solo by Pierre Brault. This is about local Quebec culture but Janet Irwin’s deft staging and the well written adaptation brings this story telling up to the level of mythology that resounds singularly like the magical arctic world captured by Robert W. Service’s The Cremation of Sam McGee and . …
