Review: "Unity (1918)".
So, Unity (1918) is the play my university is doing for their winter mainstage production. The cast and much of the crew, therefore, are students. I had to see it for not one, but two of my classes.
I don't know whether I would have gone otherwise (I didn't really have the money for tickets), but holy cow am I ever glad I did. Because it was an excellent play. It was written by Kevin Kerr, and premiered in 2001. It also won the Governor General's Award for Drama in 2002 (for those who don't know, the Governor General's Awards are presented annually in Canada in a great number of categories. It's a very high honour]. The play deals with the events in Unity, Saskatchewan, over a period of a month and a half or so in fall 1918. It's mainly concerned with how the war and the outbreak of Spanish Flu affect the residents of the town and their relationships with each other.
I was expecting it to be good, given what I had heard about it (my knowledge, prior to seeing it, can about be summed up by the preceding paragraph). What I was not expecting it to be was funny. And yet, it is. While parts of the script are definitely serious and really rather touching, others are frankly completely hilarious. (Such as the sequence where one character urges her sister to attack the town undertaker--whom she believes to be the Angel of Death due to her feverish state--with a stick that turns out to be a wooden dildo. Don't ask).
So, the script is phenomenal. You know what else was really excellent? The acting. I don't think there was a single cringeworthy performance, and a couple (Beatrice [the main character] and Sunna [the undertaker] in particular) were outstanding. I'm always slightly leery when it comes to non-professional actors (especially after seeing some truly hideous high school productions), but in this case there really wasn't anything to complain about.
The set and lighting were workaday, but served the story well. Which is really what matters. And the costumes were lovely and seemed for the most part period-appropriate (I'm not sure whether they were made specially, bought/rented, or some combination of the two). There's not a whole lot to be said about the design elements, really, because they were good but nonobtrusive. Which I feel is probably as it should be.
Two minor gripes:
First, there is a song at the end, to close the show. Now, it's a very nice song! However, it comes after a rather emotional moment, and I found it a really jarring transition--not to mention the fact that many of the characters are not really "singing" characters, if you understand what I mean by that. I feel like the play might have ended on a more reflective note if they had omitted it.
Secondly, and potentially more serious (at least, from within the anti-oppression framework I like to operate in): there is a blind character in the play. And I would have really loved to have seen him played by a blind actor. However, I can understand that casting a show at a university is very different from casting somewhere with a larger pool of actors, so I tolerate their decision; it's not like it's the Abigail Breslin Helen Keller thing (which continues to bother me). It just would have been nice to see. He still acted the part very well. And the portrayal of the character himself was quite good (no talk of what an Awful Tragedy it must be for him to have lost his sight, or his not being a Whole Person any more, or any of those other horrible tropes that tend to crop up when dealing with characters that acquire a disability).
Bottom line: It's a wonderful play. Since it's Canadian, it's highly unlikely that any of y'all who live elsewhere will have a chance to see a staged production (sadly, our theatre doesn't really escape our boundaries that often). But if by some odd twist of fate you do, or if you can track down the script, it's well worth doing so.
I don't know whether I would have gone otherwise (I didn't really have the money for tickets), but holy cow am I ever glad I did. Because it was an excellent play. It was written by Kevin Kerr, and premiered in 2001. It also won the Governor General's Award for Drama in 2002 (for those who don't know, the Governor General's Awards are presented annually in Canada in a great number of categories. It's a very high honour]. The play deals with the events in Unity, Saskatchewan, over a period of a month and a half or so in fall 1918. It's mainly concerned with how the war and the outbreak of Spanish Flu affect the residents of the town and their relationships with each other.
I was expecting it to be good, given what I had heard about it (my knowledge, prior to seeing it, can about be summed up by the preceding paragraph). What I was not expecting it to be was funny. And yet, it is. While parts of the script are definitely serious and really rather touching, others are frankly completely hilarious. (Such as the sequence where one character urges her sister to attack the town undertaker--whom she believes to be the Angel of Death due to her feverish state--with a stick that turns out to be a wooden dildo. Don't ask).
So, the script is phenomenal. You know what else was really excellent? The acting. I don't think there was a single cringeworthy performance, and a couple (Beatrice [the main character] and Sunna [the undertaker] in particular) were outstanding. I'm always slightly leery when it comes to non-professional actors (especially after seeing some truly hideous high school productions), but in this case there really wasn't anything to complain about.
The set and lighting were workaday, but served the story well. Which is really what matters. And the costumes were lovely and seemed for the most part period-appropriate (I'm not sure whether they were made specially, bought/rented, or some combination of the two). There's not a whole lot to be said about the design elements, really, because they were good but nonobtrusive. Which I feel is probably as it should be.
Two minor gripes:
First, there is a song at the end, to close the show. Now, it's a very nice song! However, it comes after a rather emotional moment, and I found it a really jarring transition--not to mention the fact that many of the characters are not really "singing" characters, if you understand what I mean by that. I feel like the play might have ended on a more reflective note if they had omitted it.
Secondly, and potentially more serious (at least, from within the anti-oppression framework I like to operate in): there is a blind character in the play. And I would have really loved to have seen him played by a blind actor. However, I can understand that casting a show at a university is very different from casting somewhere with a larger pool of actors, so I tolerate their decision; it's not like it's the Abigail Breslin Helen Keller thing (which continues to bother me). It just would have been nice to see. He still acted the part very well. And the portrayal of the character himself was quite good (no talk of what an Awful Tragedy it must be for him to have lost his sight, or his not being a Whole Person any more, or any of those other horrible tropes that tend to crop up when dealing with characters that acquire a disability).
Bottom line: It's a wonderful play. Since it's Canadian, it's highly unlikely that any of y'all who live elsewhere will have a chance to see a staged production (sadly, our theatre doesn't really escape our boundaries that often). But if by some odd twist of fate you do, or if you can track down the script, it's well worth doing so.