The Glace Bay Miners’Museum. A Theatre Steeped in Too Much Realism

Photo: Chris Mikula

There is something sad about a play that has turned into a Museum piece! That means it once had a vibrant life of its own because it echoed a particular cultural setting but as time passed, the play died a bit because other forms of performance have become more interesting, more meaningful, other forms of playwriting have become more relevant. It also could mean that the direction has not evolved with the new possibilities of the contemporary stage, especially when such a reading could have infused more life into the cinders of a work that still holds some flickering sparks. This is the feeling I had watching the Neptune Theatre/NAC English Theatre coproduction of Wendy Lill’s play which opened at the National Arts Centre last night.

The play is essentially a fable, the kind of story telling one expects from the Celtic heritage of the cultures of the Canadian eastern seacoast where the Sagouine has lived a long and fruitful life on the French language stage, partly because her tales are so savoury and the character, as embodied by Violet Léger, is so irreverent and sparkles with so much energy.

Here, young Margaret MacNeil (the bubbly and vivacious Francine Deschepper) tells us the story of her family, of the love of her life and especially of the tragedy of the Glace Bay Mine that destroyed the lives of so many Acadian people living in the area. It also leads us slowly through events that cause a snap in her mind which leads her to create a lugubrious exhibition in memory of all the men in her family, and all those other men killed in all those mining disasters. The final 20 minutes was certainly the high moment of the play but it appeared set up almost as an afterthought, with absolutely no atmospheric build up, without visual or imaginary suggestion of any kind. There was no attempt to create a a sense of terrible impending doom and tragedy to this broken down rotting world of Glace Bay that the text suggests, that the set attempts to shows us, but that the director seemed to ignore on purpose. So intent she was on remaining “faithful” to a form of realism that killed the show.

The little anecdotes told by the characters are of no interest. What is interesting is what they suggest, and what is not said. However, this staging completely erased the “unsaid”, in order to emphasize a literal reading of the play. This did not appear to be the way to go about it since the daily lives are so terribly predictable and not really interesting at that realistic level.

Seen individually the performances were acceptable. Francine yelled a lot and did seem to hold her accent most of the time, Neil the swaggering near mythical stranger; the man from the outside who suddenly appears in their world, (Gil Garratt) made a lot of noise and took a while to settle into his role. Ian the brother (Jeff Schwager) seemed too embarrassed to look at the audience and mother (Martha Irving) , always cleaning and scolding and running off to Bingo was such a dismal stereotype that she became embarrassing. The text was responsible for most of that.

The rhythm of the show was slow. The pauses were not meaningful and when things did pick up, it was for purely anecdotal reasons. Neil  (the attractive stranger ) got drunk, Grandpa who can’t speak jiggled, tapped and smiled. Margaret yelled and Neil  turned on his bagpipes and amused the audience. This is the logic of soap opera that the play should have gone beyond, bringing to these gestures much more meaning that certainly was there but that was not flushed out by the staging.

Disaster is all around these poor people who are being wiped out by the mine, as Ian the brother tries to organize the village into a strike mode. More disaster is coming and something much deeper is at stake but we don’t feel any of that. The staging fixates on the little naturalistic details that are not particularly interesting as the play moves forward.

This might have worked at an earlier period in our theatre history or as a form of testimony of life in a miner’s community but currently we are looking at this as contemporary theatre, and Canadian theatre has been in contact with many forms of stage creation, including the most exciting kinds of Quebec theatre which has dealt with disaster and loss of identity but that has gone much beyond this form of realism

I rather liked the Grandpa (David Francis) who can’t talk but who intervenes by tapping and scribbling notes on a piece of paper. The flute was beautiful and, so was that moment when Neil plays his bagpipes off stage as he pipes in the sun on that glorious morning. The sky, the earth, the atmosphere the sea, there were strong, strange forces at work here, as well as absent figures haunting this world, but the director neither neither saw nor heard them. Such a shame.

Objects collected in the wake of death produce museums that are places of memory and memories are necessary to help create identities, as Margaret says at the end of the play. However, in its present state, this play has become a Museum of its own, forgetting it represents a stage world that no longer appears to be interested in the possibilities of the stage, no longer connected to the theatre. .

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum plays at the NAC until November 3, 2012.

A slightly modified version of this review first appeared on the Toronto web site www.scenechanges.com

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum by Wendy Lill,

Directed by Mary Vingoe

Featuring the NAC English Language Theatre Company

Set and Costumes by Sue Lepage

Lighting by Leign Ann Vardy

Sound by Paul Carm

CAST

Margaret MacNeil Francine Deschepper

Grandpa David Francis

Neil Currie Gil Garratt

Ian MacNeil Jeff Schwagger

Mother Martha Irving