Emile’s Dream is a Sweet One

If someone asked me what made an “East Coast” play stand out from those written in the rest of Canada, I may respond, tongue firmly in cheek, that an “East Coast” play would need to have fiddlers, fish, some kind of strange accent sounding like drunken Irishmen and a charming inferiority complex. Artistic Fraud Theatre’s (Newfoundland) production of Emile’s Dream, which closed on Saturday as part of Eastern Front Theatre’s Supernova Festival is this punch line come to vivid life.

Theatre was born out of our desire to tell our own stories and to honour and remember our past. Emile’s Dream tells the story of Newfoundland fiddler Émile Benôit who rose to fame late in his life, but became known for popularizing Franco-Newfoundland folk music traditions and for composing about two hundred tunes on the fiddle. These sorts of biography plays can be really difficult to construct and it can be just as hard to balance embracing one’s heritage without creating something hokey and stereotypical better suited to a High School skit. In the skilled hands of renowned playwright Robert Chafe and Siminovitch Prize winning Director Jillian Keiley, however, this play is a stunning example of how to take a regional story and turn it into a creative, artful play that can transcend all borders and still brightly sing odes to the place of its birth.

The set of the play included a multitude of fiddles hanging from the ceiling, which were taken down and put back throughout to be played, tossed around mischievously and used to create simple, but very effective pictures to root the story in its time and space. Émile’s story was told by three actors (each one a brilliant and entirely mesmerizing fiddle player), Phil Churchill, Kelly Russell and Sandy Gow. Chafe constructs this tale as a piece of verbatim theatre, using Émile’s own words, and a very specific pattern of speech, to color the misadventures of his life in Black Duck Brook, Newfoundland between 1913 and his death in 1992.

Churchill, Russell and Gow all inhabit the character of Émile and they all take turns speaking his words throughout the chronology, although it is also suggested by the range in the actor’s ages, that although they all share the telling of the tale, and each one knows the beginning, middle and end of it, that Gow personifies a young Émile, Churchill, a slightly older one, and Russell, a more seasoned and wise one. I say this for two reasons. The first is the attitude that each one brings to his or her lines. Gow says her lines with the blithe naivety of youth. Churchill is more cocky, but in an utterly endearing way, and yet, still sheepish. Russell is self-assured, more intense and thoughtful and reflects back more wistfully than the others. There is also an interesting progression of their fascinating Franco-Newfoundland accents. Gow speaks curtly, with a very perceptible French accent. We are most aware of the verbatim theatre aspect of this play when she speaks because her lines sound distinctly unrehearsed and conversational, at times beginning one thought, abandoning it and beginning afresh, all within a single sentence. Churchill still retains a bit of French flair, but Russell speaks almost entirely in a Newfoundland accent and his thoughts are much more fluid, poetic and with a palpable, practical wisdom. It is also really interesting at the times when all three voices collide and speak in unison, each one performing identical gestures, for it immediately denotes significance and heightens and isolates these moments from the rest of the play.

What ties the entire play together, of course, is the music, which is glorious. I was most captivated watching Kelly Russell, who is simply transcendent, yet Churchill and Gow each have their moments in the musical spotlight as well.

Overall, this is one play that had my toe-tapping, bluenose East Coast heart feeling pretty warm and cozy, but one that I think, like the music of Émile Benôit himself, could find mass appeal beyond our shores too.

The Supernova Festival continues this week with FOUR NEW SHOWS BEGINNING TOMORROW, TUESDAY, MAY 24th, 2011.