Garrett C. Smith in The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
In the opening moments of Neil Grahn’s The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, to the strains of Rule Britannia, a top soldier is getting a military medal from the Prince of Wales.
To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.
Seconds later, as Francis Pegahmagabow is annotating, wryly, that the ceremony was “the best it ever got” in his relationship with Brit royalty, his limelight disappears, and he waves to the theatre technician behind us to restore it. “Reconciliation in action,” he quips, with a ghost of a smile. It’s funny, and it’s telling.
The new play, by a Métis writer with major comedy cred, has a fascinating true story to tell, inspired by Grahn’s research in the dark vaults of Canadian history where public consciousness rarely ventures. It’s about a remarkable Canadian, an Indigenous warrior whose deadly expertise as a sniper and scout in the bloody Front Line trenches of World War I made him prized abroad — in a way that never translated to basic respect, much less equality, at home. He could risk his life in nightly forays across the enemy line. But back in Canada he couldn’t even vote, or hire a lawyer, or secure a loan. It turned a war hero and Ojibwa Chief into an activist, a warrior on behalf of his people against the Canadian government and its lackeys.
In Shadow Theatre’s season-launching premiere production, directed jointly by John Hudson and Christine Sokaymoh Frederick, we meet the man in a star-power performance by Garret C. Smith. He impressively carries the play through its scattering of staccato scenes that are brief snapshots of moments ranging non-chronologically through time and space — from an orphan’s childhood, growing up hunting with an arsenal of traditional skills and connections to the Great Spirit, through World War I and its disillusioning aftermath, in what seems like no particular order. There are a lot of entrances and exits in this production.
Ben Kuchera and Garret C. Smith in The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
Like the second of Pegahmagabow’s “two battles” itself — the one in the trenches of Canadian bureaucracy, racism, and intransigence — all of them capture a moment, then end abruptly and inconclusively. The exit line is almost always a look from “Peggy”: a telling deadpan, an ever-so-slight stoic’s grimace, the briefest of knowing glances at the audience that speak to the absurdity of the world, an almost-shrug. They never end in anything as overt as out-and-out exasperation, even the ones that demonstrate the character’s remembered capacity for anger.
Smith’s performance memorably conjures a character who is unusually self-possessed, a powerhouse of calm, gravity, grace and dignity under fire of all kinds. And his four cast-mates play everyone else — grandparents, in-laws, wartime officers, nurses, fellow Indigenous leaders, buddies — in an exaggerated style under Hudson and Frederick’s joint direction. It’s Peggy who commands the stage for the evening. And the charismatic Smith is a real find for Edmonton theatre.
The playwright fashions The Two Battles as a memory play, a scattergun assortment of very brief scenes hosted by Pegahmagabow. He annotates from time to time, including a reflection on his “terrible gift” for “hunting men.” In a story about heroism, Grahn’s comedy muse occasionally kicks in to undercut, in a puckish way, the solemnity of a moment by acknowledging its theatrical circumstances. “I’m sharing my inner thoughts here,” he says to another character, shooing him off the stage:. “This is not your story. I was already here.…”
Monica Gates, Julie Golosky, Garett C. Smith in The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, Shadow theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
The “here” is a striking curvilinear design by c.m. zuby, a kind of amphitheatre of screens, low-rise scaffolding and in the centre a tilted and slatted round wooden “stage” like a drum, sitting on a red target. It can be lighted (or un-lighted, in Patrick Beagan’s clever design) to conjure a campfire, or a gas attack, or evoke the sense of all-surround danger in trench warfare. Aaron Macri’s subtle soundscape finds a narrative continuity between the thunder of Indigenous drumming and the thunder of cannon fire. Pegahmagabow’s uncanny success and fortitude as a scout and sniper are directly related to his traditional Indigenous skills.
Interestingly (and oddly), Macri’s boldly painted projection-scape, which includes shadow puppet-play (animator: Lynette Maurice), emphasizes a certain storybook quality: memory scrolls horizontally, in a rustic, stylized, not to say historical, technique that dates back centuries. The full moon comes up like a painting; clouds of poison gas wafting through the trenches take on ghostly shapes.
Monica Gates and Garett C. Smith, The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
The acting style of the ensemble leans into comic exaggeration, in broad, quick, cartoon strokes that occasionally press their luck. Trevor Duplessis’s gift for comedy is on display in a variety of roles. The most touching, and droll, scenes, perhaps because of their stillness or quietness, are encounters between Pegahmagabow and his taciturn, amusingly undemonstrative wife Eva (Monica Gate), or with his white wartime buddy Glen (Ben Kuchera).
The life and career of Francis Pegahmagabow is a great story, no question, and an important one to tell in this historically-challenged country. But the downside of storytelling in brief, abrupt scenes, constantly dislocated in time (which is, to be fair, the way memory and influences work in real life) is that the two-battle momentum of the story keeps getting deliberately interrupted and, I think, a bit dissipated in the process.
Garett C. Smith in The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
It’s the pointillist approach to biography — sketches on speed? — presumably with the thought that a lifetime isn’t one thing after another, it’s a simultaneous totality, with memorable glints here and there, back and forth. Something of the impact and double-weight of Pegahmagabow’s two wars, one that ended and one that continues to this day, is dispersed in this fractured landscape.
Ah yes, continuity: The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow is an open-ended play that way, and an eloquent reminder to us Canadians of a past, still present, that has made outsiders of some of us.
REVIEW
The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow
Theatre: Shadow Theatre
Written by: Neil Grahn
Directed by John Hudson and Christine Sokaymoh Frederick
Starring: Garett C. Smith, Trevor Duplessis, Ben Kuchera, Julie Golosky, Monica Gate
Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.
Running: through Nov. 24
Tickets: shadowtheatre.org
