Pelee - keep your distance
We earn love through time. We’ve all experienced love at first sight or an instant connection with someone but to have a true relationship with another person you need to experience things with them; to share joy, loss, trauma, even redemption. We are creatures of experience and memory.
What on earth does this have to do with Pelee, a play about some island in Lake Erie? Well, for me the flaw in Pelee is that we are given no real time with the characters who are meant to emotionally anchor the piece. I believe audiences want to fall in love with the characters on stage or – at the very least – establish some form of emotional connection with them. While the characters in Pelee seem intriguing and their situations are certainly compelling there was no reason to care about them. Instead of full-bodied stories, we get Reader’s Digest highlights of these people’s lives that focus on the obvious high-points: leaving a husband to look for an old lover, waiting for a lover to return from away.
Sure, I can see the connections of these stories with themes of butterflies and migration that cleverly connects everything, but so what? The stories rang emotionally empty for me because, quite simply, I have no investment in them. Sure, it’s chilling to think of a woman throwing herself off a rock because her man doesn’t return – but I need more than the basic details and the effectively creepy staging of the performer (Erin Brandenburg) lying at the bottom of lake. I want to know this woman and understand the torment that took her to the top of the rock, not some sentimental quick hit.
This lack of connection is further undermined by the style of presentation. We are watching what looks like the Pelee Preservation Society’s show for the summer tourist trade. These local characters – three men and one woman – introduce the stories, perform skits, sing songs and play strange instruments. They give us fun facts about Pelee and its history – both human and natural. But for me it’s just random information loosely tied to the theme of movement. I’m sure I could come up with compelling mini-stories about Marpole, the Vancouver neighbourhood I grew up in. Let’s see, Joy Kogawa is from there and there’s evidence of a First Nations settlement going back to 3500 BC. Kogawa was interned during the war; the natives were displaced by the Europeans. So, there we go – loss of home is a uniting theme in Marpole. All I need to do is spend a few seconds telling you how Kogawa’s home was taken away and then show you her returning a successful author many decades later. Marpole the musical is ready to roll.
I would have hoped that a piece concerned with a specific geographical location would have given me a real sense of place, a feel for the textures, sounds, smells and light on the island. But beyond learning that butterflies stop over there, I came away with not much. To me Pelee is a crowded stage lit by low-tech lighting (to create the ye old feeling), a scattering of random artefacts, a guy lying on the ground shooting projections onto the performers and – oh – some really cool looking home-made instruments. I’m sure the good people of Pelee sit around during butterfly migration season playing instruments just like them.
I don’t watch a lot of television but I’m sure I’ve seen a series of historic moments shoved in between the advertising. Maybe the members of the Pelee Project could apply to the CBC and develop a series of historical vignettes with music. They would be fantastic and at 60 seconds just the right length.
I do feel obliged, after all that, to acknowledge that the audience at the performance I attended seemed to enjoy it – certainly judging by the warmth of the reception at the end. So, who knows, maybe it’s me. I suspect that this form of mashed up, fun-filled theatre is more common in Vancouver. Perhaps it simply seems fresher to a Toronto audience. Or maybe I’m just tired of ironic distance and shows with whacky ideas that include a few sentimental vignettes to provide flavour. Personally, I’m hungry for emotional honesty. And, you know what? I want the performers and the audiences to have to work for them.
Pelee by Erin Brandenburg and Lauren Taylor; Directed by Lauren Taylor; Presented by The Pelee Project; Featuring Gord Bolan, Erin Brandenburg, Dave McEathron, Andrew Penner, Howie Shia. For more information and show times travel here.