Moonlodge: Production shows a lot of promise

It’s a role only its creator, First Nations performing arts legend Margo Kane, has ever played: Agnes, the young aboriginal woman severed from her roots as a child when a government agency snatches her from her family and who then spends years in search of herself and her place in the world.

Now Paula-Jean Prudat is Agnes — sweet, exuberant, with a nervous and expectant laugh — in a new production of Kane’s one-woman show, which premiered in 1990. The revival, part of the undercurrents festival and at the NAC Fourth Stage for Feb. 12 and 13 only, is billed as a workshop, the hope being that the production will be picked up by theatres across the country.

Despite the occasional misstep — a few muffed lines, more conviction in the second than the first part of the show — Prudat gives us a rich, captivating Agnes. Armed with only a suitcase, a drum and serious acting chops (she plays, briefly, multiple characters), Prudat infuses Kane’s mix of storytelling, dance and ritual with her own brand of verve. Funny when lampooning the destructive Hollywood version of First Nations people, touching when displaying Agnes’s hunger for love and acceptance, Prudat, under director Corey Payette, proves a worthy successor to Kane.

Especially powerful is the powwow scene where the teenaged Agnes, having joined the 1960s army of other young people hitchhiking around North America on their own quests, finally gets a glimpse of her heritage as she meets the old men, the young women, the little kids who have come together in celebration just as her family did before she was cut away from home and culture.

Kane has said her play was intended to help with the healing. Once its wrinkles are ironed out, this new production will be one more step down that road.

 

NAC English Theatre production
NAC Fourth Stage
Reviewed Friday