A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney

Jericho Arts Centre until April 17, 2022
Tickets from $26 at www.unitedplayers.com or (604) 224-8007

Posted April 5, 2022

Pre-pandemic or mid-pandemic (or whatever we call this period that’s no longer, “We’re all in this together” but “Figure it out for yourself”), this is the most interesting play I’ve seen in a long time. Under Adam Henderson’s deft and intelligent direction (aided by playwright Sally Clark), Lucas Hnath’s script is given even fuller treatment by United Players than recommended by Hnath; he suggested only a cluttered table, four chairs, four scripts, four actors. Henderson put together a design team to bring “fireworks” back into the theatre: chiefly, Todd Parker, Jacob Wan, Nico Dicecco, Christopher King, Julia Henderson and Claire Tuner.  While I’m not sure that Henderson’s expansion on this minimalist approach is absolutely necessary, for the  most part it works – and it works spectacularly in the play’s concluding moments, which are flooded with light and images by Nico Dicecco.

Hnath’s play imagines a staged reading of an unproduced screenplay that Walt Disney has written about himself; it’s a staged reading within a staged reading.  Walt’s play runs six hours (!) so what we get are fragments, interrupted by Walt (as the narrator/stage manager as well as the main character) instructing, “Fade to…”, “Cut to…”, “Interior of…”, “Close on…” etcetera. Reminiscent of Pinter’s splintered dialogue, sentences seldom finish and more is inferred by what is not said than by what is said.

The style is a bit of work for audiences but the payoff is definitely worth hanging in.

From the moment actor Paul Herbert declares, “I’m Walt Disney”, Herbert had me. Walt: charismatic but highly suspect. Suave but oily. Charming but condescending. Manipulative. A  family man whose daughter Diane (Chelsea MacDonald) hates him. But quite possibly a genius. Certainly an innovator. An American icon. You simply can’t dismiss Walt Disney and Herbert is absolutely unforgettable in the role.

By the time we meet Walt, a heavy smoker, he is already coughing and soon, coughing blood. He’s facing his own mortality and like King Lear, he’s pondering his legacy. We go back and forth into his past – the forays into nature documentaries and the fiasco with the lemmings that would simply not jump off the cliff for the cameras; the animators who wanted more money; the widowed farmer who would not allow a tree to be cut down to make way for Walt’s biggest, most ambitious dream – his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), a utopia of sorts where, in Walt’s words, “This will be a place where nobody dies”. Walt as God.

Ultimately, Hnath gives us Walt, the megalomaniac: it’s all about Walt.

And yet it isn’t. At one point Walt says, “Nothing comes from nothing” and suddenly we are in the world of Shakespeare’s King Lear. Both facing their mortality, loved yet not loved.

And this is where, for me, Hnath’s play really started to resonate. In Sally Clark’s words in the talkback session, A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney is about the death of the ego. Walt, like the rest of us, can’t really imagine his obliteration. “Here today, gone tomorrow “ rolls off our tongues but not our psyches. Walt Disney becomes the playwright’s vehicle for opening up the conversation.

Morbid? Not at all. The play is entirely entertaining and is supported by Brian Parkinson who, as Walt’s brother Roy, infuses his frequent, “Okay” with so many shades of meaning; Chelsea MacDonald who remains silent until an angry outburst sheds light on Walt as a father; and Ryan Trieus, as Diane’s  slow talking ex-football player husband.

Add yet another layer to Hnath’s script: it’s a play about the stories we tell ourselves, the myths we choose to perpetuate, the misconceptions we encourage. In the end, do we really care about the truth – however that might be arrived at – or do we just love a good story?

Walt Disney was a great storyteller and his reputations has been as up and down as the roller coasters at his theme parks. When discussing this play and Walt Disney’s career in general, one of my adult daughters commented, “I wouldn’t have The Disney Channel in my home.” Yet years ago, as a child, she begged to go to Disneyland and on the drive to Mexico, her pleading paid off.  We all went to Disneyland on the way through LA and the whole family sang, “It’s a Small World After All” all the way to Manzanillo. And back.

Time, that old trickster, puts a new twist on everything.