ON STAGE: Canoe Lake
eye WEEKLY
eye WEEKLY April 13 1995
Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday
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ON STAGE ON STAGE
preview
CANOE LAKE
Featuring Deborah Lambie, Jeffrey Aarles and Martin Julian.
Written by Geoff Kavanagh.
Directed by Colleen Williams.
Tarragon Extra Space, 30 Bridgman Ave.
To April 23. $12, 531-1827.
GONE SWIMMING WITH TOM THOMSON
by
JOHN DEGEN
Playwright Geoff Kavanagh took a one-hour Summerworks production,
fleshed it out a bit, remounted it, and his show wound up being one of
12 nominees for this year's Floyd S. Chalmers Award for outstanding
Canadian play. But that was Ditch, and this is now.
Kavanagh, along with Inkenstink Productions partners actor Jeffrey
Aarles and actor/director Colleen Williams, is going for a repeat
success with a remount of Canoe Lake, their 1994 Summerworks offering.
Williams directed Ditch -- a darkly comic take on the tragedy of the
Franklin Expedition -- and is back in the saddle again. Over the phone
from a church-basement rehearsal hall, she maps out the strategy for
the remount of Canoe Lake.
"When you put together an hour-long script for a festival, you can hit
a lot of notes, but you can't hit them all," she says. "I think Geoff
knew where he had to go with Canoe Lake. With the Summerworks edition,
I think he needed to just try and draw people into the story and hope
for the best. Now we're working it to a more fully realized version."
This play's title refers to a small lake in Algonquin Park, best known
for having once floated the (suspiciously) dead body of Group of Seven
painter Tom Thomson. Thomson was discovered in Canoe Lake with a nasty
contusion on his head and his body entangled in fishing line. He was
pronounced dead by accidental drowning, despite having no water in his
lungs. (Thomson had supported his art by working as a wilderness guide,
and had made more than one enemy among the locals.)
Canoe Lake uses Thomson's mysterious death as its starting point and
works toward a portrait of the artist through those he left behind --
his friend Lowry, lover Winnie, and the undertaker sent to deal with
the remains. Kavanagh's early script had a `whodunnit' feel. The
expanded version retains that quality, but allows for a better sense of
Thomson's character and artistry to come through.
"It feels like there are four characters in the show instead of just
the three," says Williams. "Tom's there through the whole thing. But
rather than just being the focus of a whodunnit, his death has a
resonance in each of the characters' lives. The play is much more about
these three coming to their own personal truths about their connection
with him. Even the undertaker, who knows him only through his
paintings. There's a reverence for him, and a reverence for where he
lived."
Like Ditch before it, Canoe Lake will aim for a mixture of laughter and
dread. "As always with Kavanagh, it's slightly wonky," offers Williams.
"There's a lot of comedy, but there's certainly a dark force moving
through it."
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