Uptown Magazine Online - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

Uptown Magazine - Winnipeg's Online Source for Arts, Entertainment & News

November 6, 2008


	Get your copy! Find the Uptown Magazine pickup location nearest you.

2008-11-06

Nothing lost in translation

French-language playwright Marc Prescott's Encore is adapted in English - and it's still every bit as moving

A-

ENCORE
Until Nov. 9, Rachel Browne Theatre

Relatively unknown by anglophone theatre audiences in Manitoba, Winnipegger Marc Prescott is nonetheless an award-winning French-language playwright, actor and director. Theatre Projects Manitoba is attempting to change this dichotomy with its first production of the 2008-09 season, a translation, by Prescott, of his play, Encore.

Encore focuses on a couple, Sir and Ma'am, who we initially encounter celebrating their first anniversary. In an attempt to never forget their courtship's first blushes of love or take their love for granted, Ma'am has decided that they should re-enact the script of their first meeting on every anniversary. Sir complies, more out of acquiescence than understanding, and it is here the story begins.

We observe the couple over six anniversaries that span their first to their 50th on which they revisit their first meeting. With this streamlined simplicity, Prescott weaves the story of their lives through better and worse, including the anxiousness of new parenthood, the disinterest of a waning relationship, the bitterness of divorce and, ultimately, the reconciliation of a love that may have been abandoned but was never forgotten. Throughout this process the words of their scripted love remain the same, but their meaning morphs from a means of inclusion to a weapon of separation and back again, while the couple's roles within it alter.

As the couple, Arne MacPherson and Monique Marcker seamlessly transform throughout this life together. Marcker's shrill urgency as Ma'am on the first anniversary is both humorous and heartbreaking; she wields their love script like a talisman against future unhappiness. And Sir's initial bumbling of it is elegantly brought full circle by the end of the play by MacPherson. Both actors embody their characters with the ease of recognition, and while certain plot points may be a bit too obvious (MacPherson's hockey-watching drunk seems too pedestrian for the story), they carry on with heart-wrenching realism.

The gorgeously simple set offers a wonderful physical manifestation of the couple's journey; the table and chairs from the lounge where they first met are tugged down a path by the couple, lined at each stop by symbolic representations of each anniversary (crumpled paper for the first anniversary, wood chips for the fifth, fallen leaves for the 50th). The sound of Marcker's high heel angrily crunching down on broken china is a harrowing echo of the ruin of the couple's marriage at 20 years,

Director Anne Hodges keeps the actors and the pace on target, allowing the scenes room to breathe but never letting the proceedings lag. We see only brief snapshots of a lifetime of love, pain and transformation, yet these glimpses offer a satisfying and moving window into the relationship of Sir and Ma'am.

Encore is a satisfyingly touching portrayal of a love that weathers the damages inflicted by lovers who, through a lifetime together and apart, finally realize the sanctity of it.
— Barb Stewart

Canuck canon classic makes a comeback

Billy Bishop Goes to War has its drawbacks, but it's still an endearing slice of Canadiana

BILLY BISHOP GOES TO WAR
Until Nov. 16, Ellice Café and Theatre

Anchored by the pleasantly capable performance of Brent Hirose, Theatre by the River's production of Billy Bishop Goes to War is a puzzling pleasure.

Billy Bishop... is the kind of play one expects to be relegated to community theatre revues or seniors' homes. Chronicling the story of the Canadian World War I pilot hero, it's a quaint musical that could easily dismissed as old-fashioned nostalgia with little to offer audiences in the 21st century.

In some ways, this may be true. While Billy's story itself is classic - ne'er-do-well young man finds meaning in fighting the war and becomes a hero in the process - its execution is sometimes belaboured and trite. No matter the talents of wonderful local musician Patrick Keenan, whose perfectly coifed hair and moustache could have him walking straight out of a Jeeves and Wooster caper, the musical component of the show is sometimes just plain exasperating. Although there are some genuinely fun musical moments such as the rousing Empire Soire, the music tends to make the show a bit too cloying, despite its serious subject matter.

And while, by the end of the first act, you were wishing writers John Gray and Eric Peterson (now most famous for playing Oscar on Corner Gas) weren't so enamoured with including one more bloody song, the second act pulls up its socks (not to mention the pace) once Billy becomes a high-flying ace.

With its exploration of heroism, colonialism and the horrors of war, Billy Bishop... touches on timeless topics that its one-person format manages ably, and Brent Hirose is pleasingly adaptable, playing 17 different roles in the show, including a sweet Everyman touch as Billy. The resonance of the themes explains why we still find the show on the stage today, and Peterson and Gray have captured an important piece of Canadian history that could otherwise easily fall into the hazy mists of the forgotten.

Despite its sometimes painful devices (the full-circle moment when Billy and his son head to World War II is awfully obvious, even if it is true-to-life), there is something to the down-home Canadian earnestness of the show that just can't be denied. It may be difficult to draw parallels to modern life in the play's old-fashioned-ness, but that does not make the story irrelevant.

And, much like the release of Passchendaele, renewing interest in the horrifying conditions of World War I, a time in which men were sent off into the mud and muck on horseback, should not be dismissed as quaint entertainment - nor should the dream of a young man to fly above it all.

Billy Bishop Goes to War is an entertainingly honest and heartfelt chapter in the Canadian theatre cannon, despite its limitations.
— Barb Stewart

Current Issue • Archive • What’s Up • Contact • Media Kit • Contests