Lac/Athabasca
Lac/Athabasca by Len Falkenstein is the premiere production of a project to hone a play inspired by the train derailment and fire at Lac-Mégantic, Quebec last summer as well as another similar oil train derailment and fire that took place this past spring in New Brunswick. Produced by Theatre Free Radical, a company of artists out of New Brunswick, these incidents and the web of economic and social circumstances and choices that led to them hit, literally, close to home. The piece is a strong beginning – the monologues and scenes personalize what was, to me, a terrible but distant news story. The scenes are well written and performed by a particularly talented and committed group of actors.
Lac/Athabasca is not a linear play but rather a set of scenes and monologues that ambitiously take place in more than eight different settings and in the near and distant past in Alberta and New Brunswick. The transitions from setting to setting were at times confusing as well as awkward. It was difficult to sort out who was who (each actor plays two to five different characters) and where and when the actors were especially early on. Though the actors did very well in defining distinctive personalities within a minute or two, with similar costumes and what I imagine was a venue issue (there were large projections of photos that were, unfortunately, projected on a rippled black curtain which made them almost impossible to make out from my seat in the theatre) it was a bit of a struggle to immerse myself in the action.
The scenes that stood out the most and really had me in thrall were the monologues of the fictional victims and survivors of the train derailment and tsunami of fire as well as the scenes of frustration and impotence among those who know that there are big problems at the oil sands and with the trains. There were a few elements and scenes, which though at times very powerful and well-acted, seemed only tenuously connected to the accident - the Athabasca glacier guide, the fur trader and, particularly, the mythical man hunting bear.
Lac/Athabasca featured particularly outstanding performances by: Rebekah Chassé as Janice and Hugette – I was viscerally affected by both; Jean-Michel Cliché as Phil; and Jake Matrin who created five distinct equally strong characterizations and several convincing accents.
What is truth and what is fiction in the play is unclear, though the program says much of it is accurate. If even half of it is, this play is a necessity. This premiere contains many powerful pieces of theatre and is very strong beginning to a project that I'm excited to follow.