The Wars, Frederick Wood Theatre , 22 November 2019

While my wife and our two daughters and I have been in Canada (Vancouver) since 1975 I sometimes feel a bit like a tourist. And I do feel a tad of alienation during Remembrance Day. Since I was born in Buenos Aires, in 1942 the world wars were far away. I did not know anybody who had fought or died in either war.

You cannot make remembrance grow

But it was reading Pierre Berton’s Vimy many years ago that suddenly made me aware of Canada’s roll in the war. It was chatting with Timothy Findley when I photographed him that made me read his short novel The Wars.

Dream Healer - Timothy Findley
Elizabeth Rex - Timothy Findley

Timothy Findley at the Hotel Vancouver

Once, while taking portraits of Raymond Burr I asked why his partner was wearing a tie with the little logo HMCS Sackville. Burr explained that the Sackville was the sole surviving corvette ( a small ship with a tighter turning circle than a WWII German submarine) and that he was doing everything possible to save it from scrap (he did succeed). These little ships that would have made all those Canadian prairie sailors sicker than dogs saved the allies from the many German submarine attacks in the Atlantic.

It is all the above that does not rationally explain how this wonderful play in which the actors (most UBC theatre students and graduates) of the same age as all those that fought in the war to end all wars was somehow left behind by our retracting and moribund conventional media.

Lois Anderson

Vancouver seems to have a poor memory for its recent heritage. The director of this play adapted from Findley’s play by Dennis Garnhum was directed by a stellar actress (I am old-fashioned). She is Lois Anderson.

For anybody who was forgotten the Frederick Wood Theatre (affectionately called the Freddie) the sight lines are excellent and the stage cavernous.

This was most evident (the stage size helped to give the impact of war) when I attended the play on November 22. There was no curtain and the whole stage was being used for the play. On stage right there was always a person in charge of the sounds of bombs, animals, bird, lightning, etc. On the centre way in the back there was a makeup table with mirror for touch-ups. Next to it a large and long rack with all the costumes. In short a rough look at how a play is put together was part of the pleasure I had with The Wars.

Findley’s novel in a short résumé is about the inhumanity of man with animals and how this parallels our inhumanity with our fellow humans. This meant that in this staging there was a Field Marshal frog, a couple of bunnies, some other little animals but best of all a joint collaboration between Scenic Designer Cecilia Vedala and Costume Designer Erica Story gave us some delightful human horses, that slowly prance across the stage. It was this year that I spotted green and blue poppies on Remembrance Day telling us about the great loss of animal life (principally horses) in that Great War.

The makeup of the soldiers reflected the true mixed ethnicity of Canada’s soldiers that went to war.

The play was not a play to make you smile and leave with an optimistic mood that things are all well in our world. Findley’s novel, made into a play, reflected that today’s insane illogic is nothing new.

The actors were all convincing in their roles but one stood out. This was Laura Reynolds who played the mother, Mrs. Ross of our main protagonist, Robert Ross (David Volpov). Reynolds had a stage presence that hit me hard. I can only hope that someday she may come back as one of my favourite characters, Miss Havisham. Or could she be an ultimate Lady Macbeth?