Jericho Arts Centre to November 3, 2024
Tickets from $26.00 from www.ticketleap.events
Posted October 26, 2024
If you’ve never seen Billy Bishop Goes to War, here’s your chance to see this 1978 Canadian musical written by iconic Canadian writer John MacLachlan Gray and iconic Canadian actor Eric Peterson. Arguably, this two-hander put our nation’s theatre on the world map as Peterson and Gray toured their show from its premiere production at The Cultch (produced by Tamahnous Theatre) across Canada to Broadway, off-Broadway, London, Germany and beyond. It continues to be one of the most produced Canadian plays worldwide not because it’s an affordable two-hander but because it’s a damned good play and a fantastic vehicle for an actor who’s called upon to play almost twenty characters. Peterson, who played Billy, and Gray at the piano, were in their early 30s back then.
It was revived at the much-missed Vancouver Playhouse in 1998, once again with Gray and Peterson where it was seen by a young Ryan Beil who immediately decided to become an actor. Circles within circles: director Sarah Rodgers mounted the play in 2008 in UBC’s Telus Studio featuring Beil, as Billy, and his old school friend Zachary Gray, John MacLachlan Gray’s son on piano and guitar.
To November 3, Billy Bishop Goes to War is a guest production at the Jericho Arts Centre, home of United Players, helmed by Sarah Rodgers. Circles within circles.
Actor Damon Calderwood has been playing Billy Bishop for sixteen years – longer than Bishop, the multi-medaled WWI ace fighter pilot from Owen Sound, was airborne and responsible for machine-gunning forty-two or forty-three German fighter planes out of the sky.
The play was slightly altered in 1998 by Gray and Peterson to reflect the fact they were now in their 50s and in this Ace Productions mounting, directed by Gerry Mackay, Billy (Calderwood) and his sidekick musician (Chris Robson), are now retired military men looking back on the war.
Calderwood, in an authentic Royal Flying Corps uniform, switches fluidly between roles; now he is Billy, floundering around in the mud with his horse and wishing he were in the RAF not the cavalry. Now he is upper crust Lady St. Helier, getting rough-around-the-edges Billy shipshape and ready to meet the King. Or, white-scarfed chanteuse Hélène who makes him feel special, takes him to bed and warns him that too much introspection isn’t good in wartime if he wants to get “a little older”. For a musical that revolves around memories of wartime, it’s surprisingly funny.
Calderwood makes magic when, childlike, he races around the performance area with a toy plane: “Brrrmmm, brrmmm”. He makes Bishop’s delight in being aloft so palpable that it’s easy to forget that targeting an enemy plane’s gas line was what Bishop was always aiming for; hitting it would result in the plane turning into a huge fireball before plunging to earth.
And this is – despite all the fun and games of Calderwood’s excellent performance – Billy Bishop Goes to War at its most interesting: the juxtaposition of the exuberant freedom of flight, the bright blue yonder, and what was really going on down below. WWI. Trenches. Poison gas. And those weren’t just planes that were being shot from the sky; those were young men with mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sweethearts waiting anxiously for their return – just as “Margaret” to whom Bishop constantly writes, was waiting for him. For me, Billy Bishop Goes to War has always struck a delicate but uneasy balance. When Calderwood, as Billy, screams a raucous, loud and proud, “ I win” upon blowing up an enemy plane after a thrilling, lengthy chase, it’s both ecstatic and chilling.
Chris Robson, also in uniform, provides lively piano accompaniment and harmony, even, at one point, staggering along with an inebriated Billy. Lighting design, with some pretty spectacular effects, is Steve Bulat’s; and b/w slide projections are by Eileen Smith and director Mackay.
After almost fifty years, Billy Bishop Goes to War is still being produced, critically acclaimed and entertaining. At the risk of sounding like a nationalist, it’s quintessentially Canadian: small-town Canadian boy becomes a celebrated war hero in spite of himself. A Canadian musical.
Note: I highly recommend Jerry Wasserman’s article “Giving Up the Toy Plane for the Cane”, an exploration of how Billy Bishop Goes to War has evolved over time. It’s not a review of this production but an excellent study of the play’s evolution over time. Google will take you there.
If you’ve never seen Billy Bishop Goes to War, I highly recommend it. And if you’ve seen it before – even if you saw it back in 1978, 1998 and/or 2008 as I did – check it out to see how you feel about it this time around. With drones dropping bombs in the Middle East, war has dramatically changed since WWI. What hasn’t changed, obviously, is our failure to avoid armed conflict or once in full swing, to negotiate a cease fire.
Splendid production. Food for thought as Armistice Day approaches.