The Stratford Theatre Review: Yvette Nolan’s The Art of War
By Ross
Presented with an endless amount of love and compassion, the art of those brave Canadians sent to the front lines of the Second World War surrounds us, embedding their tragic, yet beautiful undercurrents into our collective soul. Framed and highlighted in the windows and all around us inside the Stratford Festival‘s intimate Studio Theatre, they play with the complexities in color and unmask their intricate shapes of documented destruction for us all to take in and come to terms with. And as the lights come down and shift our view on the singular figure standing before us, we are enthralled as the bugle plays and the drums beat a rhythm of advance.
Upright and engaged before us is the Canadian artist and soldier, Nick, played passionately by Josue Laboucane (Stratford’s Much Ado About Nothing), gazing into his complex, possibly violent future on the chaotic front lines of WWII. He wears his Canadian army uniform with pride, thanks to the intense costuming by Patricia Reilly (CTF’s Ghost), knowing both the horrors and the duty that exist in what he is being sent into. Commissioned to document a conflict with paint and a brush, he stands with questioning earnestness. These are the weapons this war artist carries, along with his rifle as he grapples with his own sense of self, his purpose, and his artistry, as a lecturing voice from the future tries to unpack the history of this man and his like, and all that we are about to discover in playwright Yvette Nolan’s captivating and intense drama, The Art of War.
Nick has arrived in war-torn Europe to play his part, serving his country, not just with a rifle that he holds uncomfortably, but with a paintbrush and an artist’s eye. He is not like those around him, including his best friend and confidant, Newman, played heroically by Jordin Hall (Stratford’s Anne of Green Gables). He has been tasked with documenting the destruction and consequences of war, to be witness to the sacrifice and resilience of all those Canadian soldiers who stand beside him. It’s a powerful burden that sets him apart from those he stands with, and in this unique role as both chronicler of carnage and witness to the wickedness of war, he will need to find the guts and the confidence to fulfill his commitment to the cause. It’s a challenge not only to his soul and his courage, but to his internalized belief system. And what he experiences, and what we take in during this 90-minute one-act play, has the power to transform us all, through enlightenment and the deep emotional connection with this thoughtful soldier and the art that is hung all around us.
Inspired by Canada’s official war art program, the play digs its dirty soldier boots into the horrors and mud of the Second World War. It beautifully and emotionally engages with the complexities of art and the darkness of war, combined through meaningful engagements with other soldiers and a diverse group of civilians who make their way before him. They are hauntingly manufactured within his troubled mind and created out of real-world war experiences. It’s an astute, complicated, yet symbolic unwinding that takes us through his war-torn trauma with clever diligence and authenticity, giving over to moments of grief and internalized despair as often as he is taken away from the brutality of war through well-placed song and deeply embraced friendship.
What is his purpose, Nick asks, as he both questions his own skill and the possible insignificance of his job at the front. There’s bloody poetry in his work, he is told by the immortalized Newman, who keeps returning to shore him up against his own artistic doubt and to keep him tuned into his purpose. There is an honesty in the perspective, he is told; a language of his own that is formed, not just by the often returning and heartbreaking interactions with Newman, but also within the wandering personification of the casualties of war. Nolan delivers us Magda, played powerfully by Jenna-Lee Hyde (Stratford’s Sense and Sensibility), who gives Laboucane’s Nick a centered humanity that echos beyond their brief chocolate infused moments, where survival is a one-day-at-a-time torture, for someone who was just like us, reading a newspaper and drinking a coffee, wondering about her day, before a war threw her into desperate chaos and survival mode.
“I cannot paint him enough deaths to give him peace,” Nick states with anguish. Here lies the heart of The Art of War, as directed with clarity and a soul-baring heart by Keith Barker (Dramaturge/Stratford’s A Wrinkle in Time), balancing the souls of Magda and Newman with all the atrocities and suffering of the War to end all Wars, and the complexities of his own personal value, as an artist and a soldier, in an impersonal war. He is thrown into endless discussions both internally and externally, reeling in the artist’s eternal doubt and the significance (or insignificance) of his role as a war painter. There is the lovingly scripted engagement with the beautifully voiced singer, Eva, captivatingly well played by Julie Lumsden (Shaw’s Gypsy), brought in to bring some distracting melodies to the troops. She asks, most honestly, “Shouldn’t art be beautiful?” But art is more than just this simplistic framing for Nick. It carries a purpose that must be unpacked, like his brushes and Newman’s symbolic return, time and time again, until he (and we) understand all the layers of healing and growth that this young nation needs to comprehend and learn from.
‘Will art ever fully be able to convey that level of truth in destruction?‘ asks playwright Yvette Nolan (The Diviners). Or does a medium like film carry that burden in a more focused, real-time way? “It needs to make you feel something,” he argues, with himself, and with others, including the war photographer, played by Rylan Wilkie (Stratford’s London Assurance), whom he comes into contact with. The initial interaction, written with a bit of a heavy hand by Nolan, attempts to understand, almost too scholastically, the differences between photography and painting. Distinctly different than the emotional tremor that exists throughout this thoughtful play, their interaction feels like lecture bullet points being checked off, while also dutifully illustrating how each has their own particular value, even when one method is considered past its prime and not immediate or real enough.
Wilkie is intense, especially in the later, stronger scene as they both take in unspeakable horror through the photographer’s lens and the artist’s eyes, mere moments after he confronts Nick’s purpose for being here and painting what he sees. Wilkie is given a better, more naturalistic reframing to unpack a painter’s value when he embodies a defecting German painter on the run. The man is trying to save himself and pieces of his art puzzle after being asked to do something that is against all that art stands for. “I can only paint what I see,” he tells us on refusing to paint a portrait of Hitler. “Imagine if I painted the inside of this man, put it on the outside, on the canvas for the world to see.” He knows his value to art, and in that interaction, we learn about power and creativity in a way that he might not have understood before.
“Eating makes me sad,” Magda tells Nick, in a moment that resonates deeply. The play steadfastly and strongly unpacks a complicated arena, both trying to understand an artist’s role in a war, and to comprehend the renowned Beaverbrook Collection of War Art from the Canadian War Museum, painted by enlisted men such as Captain Edward John Hughes (Patrol Dismissing in Camp, 1945, Oil on canvas), Captain George Douglas Pepper (Assault Troops Embarking, around 1943-45, Oil on canvas), Captain lawren Phillips harris (Hitler Line Barrage, 1946, Oil on canvas), and the devistatingly powerful Flight Lietenant Aba Bayefsky (Belsen Concentration Camp Pit, 1945, Oil on canvas) – pulled out of the backroom and on display throughout the theatre. It’s a huge undertaking, but Nolan finds unearthed truths in their approach, both in the real interactions and the expressionistic unwrapping.
This is particularly true in the repeated hauntings of both Magda, who emotionally remarks, “If I do not survive this war, then I will survive in this book of a Canadian painter-soldier.” And with his close friend and muse, Newman, played out beautifully on the sparse, enigmatic set by Teresa Przybylski (Tarragon’s Post-Democracy), with striking and effective lighting by Logan Cracknell (Buddies’ Roberto Zucco) and sound by Adam Campbell (Stratford’s The Goat, or Who is Sylvia?). Nolan’s language is rich in value and meaning, like the painter’s brush strokes trying to capture a constantly evolving war. “There’s nothing normal about this,” he states. Yet, the emotional truths that are painted within The Art of War are as honest and striking as one could hope for, even when the sometimes earnestness of the writing gets the upper hand. Still, the provocative ending, thanks to the fine reordered return of Lumsden, ties the framing together neatly from a heartfelt perspective, bestowing the artist with purpose and validation, a concluding act that feels deserving and personally satisfying.
