DENIS JOHNSTON
The first volume is old news by now, so much so that the back cover of Later Stages quotes reviews of the earlier book, one of them by me. Early Stages (I once wrote) represents a much-needed re-examination of the territory covered by Murray Edwards' A Stage in Our Past (1968), generally considered the first analytic book in the discipline of Canadian theatre history. Early Stages is comprised of six substantial essays framed by an introduction and a concluding chronology. The first essay is "The Cultural Setting: Ontario Society to 1914" by J.M.S. Careless. Because much of theatre history, in Canada and elsewhere, has been written by people untrained in historical methods, the contribution of such a distinguished social historian is of crucial importance. Careless's essay not only provides a vital survey of the changing social conditions under which theatre grew in 19th-century Ontario, but his trademark "metropolitanist" terminology also serves to establish a theoretical framework for the whole volume.
Leslie O'Dell's short history of garrison theatre in Ontario, "Amateurs of the Regiment, 1815-1870," could be read as a rebuttal to modern critics who might dismiss garrison theatre as inartistic, primitive, or a colonial imposition. On the contrary, as O'Dell demonstrates, garrison theatre served frontier Ontario in developing a public taste for drama, promoting the moral and social respectability of theatre, and providing a foundation (and often practical assistance) for local amateurs and eventually for indigenous professional companies. At the end of the pioneer period came Ontario's golden age of touring, whose performers are profiled in Mary M. Brown's "Entertainers of the Road." While Brown's descriptions include Ontario theatre artists abroad and visiting artists in Ontario, her most intriguing sketches are of those Canadians who stayed in Canada to eke out a precarious living in a grudging cultural climate: Harold Nelson, for example, an elocution teacher at Toronto's Conservatory of Music, who toured the classics throughout the West.
Writes Robertson Davies in his essay "The Nineteenth Century Repertoire," "Drama may be profitably looked at as one aspect of the history of society, as a reflection of what is properly believed outside the playhouse, of what the age desires, and of what it fears." (91) As he did in The Mirror of Nature (1983) and other historical writings, Davies exploits his vast theatrical knowledge and brilliant story-telling skills, this time to cast light on the booming pluralistic society of Victorian Ontario through the varying kinds of drama in which it took pleasure. In contrast to this broad range of the legitimate theatre, Gerald Lenton-Young's "Variety Theatre" takes us on a delightful tour of high-wire artists, menageries and circuses, minstrel shows, concert saloons, dime museums, burlesque and vaudeville.
The last essay is "Theatres and Performance Halls" by Robert Fairfield, really more of a catalogue than an essay. The architect of Ontario's famous Stratford Festival Theatre, Fairfield has also become a leading expert on heritage performing spaces in Ontario, and his descriptions here are enriched with many photographs. Finally, a concluding "Chronology" by Richard Plant is not only a trivia-buff's delight, but also gives a sense of chronological development across all the preceding topics. Two quibbles, however: I could do without the insistent chronicling of published but unperformed plays of doubtful significance, and of the birthdates of some Canadian-born stars-- Beatrice Lillie in 1894, Raymond Massey in 1896--who rose to fame long after the period under study.
Perhaps the greatest achievement in Early Stages is the sense of it being a unified and comprehensive whole--rare in collections of essays. Each essay is complete and thorough in itself, and each refers pertinently to its companion pieces. As a result, as the back cover of Later Stages tells us, this volume carries implications "beyond its geographical and chronological limits, and even beyond the theatre. It leads us to scrutinize the kind of society which produced these theatrical phenomena, and what that society has since become."
Not all of these virtues are present in the second volume, Later Stages. Like Early Stages, it is a collection of essays, finished with an extensive bibliography and index. We miss the historical overview to set the cultural scene; perhaps the editors felt that their reading audience would not need the extra help, or perhaps Canada since World War I appears to be in such a state of continuous change that such an overview is impossible. Nonetheless the first essay, "Professional Performers and Companies" by Robert B. Scott, capably sets the parameters for the period of study. Decade by decade, Scott weaves together three kinds of stories: Ontarians performing abroad (especially in the U.S.), foreign companies in Ontario, and Ontarian artists and companies in Canada. Each decade has its own distinguishing features: in the 1920s, for example, we see stock companies pursuing audiences into smaller and smaller towns, in effect trying to outrun the tidal wave of cinema technology. In the 40s and 50s we see many small professional companies springing up to meet Canada's post-war cultural ambitions. One weakness here is the occasional jingoistic generalization ("This privileging of American commercial success proved to be the greatest impediment to the development of a truly Canadian theatre" (85)) which seems out-of-tune with Scott's generally inclusive treatment and with the metropolitanist underpinnings established by Careless in Early Stages. Another weakness--and it is not really Scott's--is that his topic seems impossibly broad. Perhaps two separate essays here would have served it better.
David Gardner's essay "Variety" suffers from a similar diffusion of focus. In it, a fascinating compendium of circuses, minstrel shows, medicine shows and vaudeville acts is muddled by excursions into musical comedy, rock concerts, even a short history of custard pies on film. Although Gardner's virtues as a historian include a gift for making connections between things that appear to be unrelated, any virtue can become a liability in the wrong circumstance. While Christopher Plummer undoubtedly starred in the movie The Sound of Music, and while Elvis Presley and The Beatles both played concerts at Maple Leaf Gardens, the inclusion of such facts in an essay on Variety weakens its main points.
Ross Stuart's "Summer Theatre and Festivals" provides a good overview of this popular Ontario form. In the period following World War II, the topic is inevitably dominated by the Stratford and Shaw festivals; still, we are also treated to a delightful array of ventures from Niagara Falls to the Thousand Islands. If the founding of the Stratford Festival "effectively destroyed summer stock" in 1953, evidently large summer theatres and small have come to co-exist since then. Another fine survey is "Amateur Theatre" by Martha Mann and Rex Southgate. While this topic too could easily be dominated by a single aspect--the Dominion Drama Festival--the authors turn this problem to their advantage by structuring most of the essay along the lines of Ontario's three DDF regions. An important element is the chronicling of some amateur careers of vanishing fame such as Ivor Lewis, W.S. Milne, "Cissy" Brickenden and Robertson Davies. The fact that Davies is prominent in at least two other essays indicates what a protean figure he is to 20th-century Ontario theatre.
In a shorter essay entitled "University Theatre," Ross Stuart and Ann Stuart deal with another kind of amateur theatre. One must be grateful to the editors for including this topic, often overlooked, as the Stuarts' story of important university programmes and personalities adds a great deal to the published history of theatre in Ontario. On the other hand, Eric Binnie's "Theatrical Design" does not seem to add very much. The conclusion one is liable to draw is that, except for the new professionalism brought into Ontario by the founding of the Stratford Festival, and except for a few individual designs such as Harold Town's for The Lady's Not for Burning (1953) and Herbert Whittaker's for the Canadian Players' Inuit King Lear (1961), there is not much to say about theatrical design in Ontario prior to 1970. Binnie's concluding paragraph asks the question, "can one speak of an Ontario style in theatrical design?" The irresistible answer is "no": perhaps design influences cross borders too easily for any geographically-defined style to take hold.
Anthony Stephenson's essay "Theatre Criticism" begins by citing a 1950 article which compares the plight of being a Canadian theatre critic to that of being an aviator before the invention of airplanes. As Stephenson explains, "until an indigenous theatre exists, a theatre of some seriousness and achievement that has its roots in the life of the community and that feeds and is fed by that community, there can be no theatre criticism worth much consideration." But even when there was no indigenous theatre to speak of, there were always indigenous audiences. And Stephenson shows the growth of critical craft through the work of a few prominent practitioners, deftly describing not only their critical stances but also the figures they cut in Ontario's theatre world. If that world was mainly Toronto, well, that's where most of the theatre took place and where most of the criticism was written.
One turns to Alexander Leggatt's essay "Plays and Playwrights" wondering whether there is anything to be added to Michael Tait's admirable treatment in the Literary History of Canada (1965). As with Stephenson's essay, one is more than pleasantly surprised. Instead of enumerating every published playwright in 20th-century Ontario, Leggatt chooses to treat only six important figures: Merrill Denison, Herman Voaden, Robertson Davies, James Reaney, David Freeman and David French. (A quibble: I would have been tempted to omit the last two, since their first plays did not appear until the 1970s and their canons properly belong to the next study of Ontario theatre.) Leggatt has a rare and remarkable gift for concise jargon-free dramatic analysis, as well as a rare talent for articulating what lies hidden (as the saying goes) in plain view. His assessments are not only telling, they can also be generous, as in his summation of the achievements of Herman Voaden. Overall, this essay could well be taught to university classes as a model of first-rate dramatic criticism.
The final piece in the volume, Heather McCallum's "Resources for Theatre History," is admirable in similar ways. It begins with an epigraph from the ubiquitous Robertson Davies: "The lot of the theatre historian is a hard one anywhere, for stage people are of all artists the most bemused, careless and creatively mendacious in their records and recollections." McCallum gives us a concise but compelling description of principles of collections and collecting before proceeding to the requisite enumeration of where future researchers may profitably look for things. I wonder if she realizes, in a lifetime spent providing guidance and resources to Canadian theatre historians, what an important historian she is herself.
Later Stages is not so successful as Early Stages in presenting itself as a unified or comprehensive treatment. The essays do not generally refer to their companion pieces; indeed, in a few instances one wishes that they had, and thus avoided duplication or contradiction. For example, Gardner alludes to the DDF in the '30s as having a "'Love and Whisky' atmosphere" (172); but the reference seems inappropriate when we learn from Mann and Southgate that Calvert Distilleries' sponsorship of the Festival did not begin until 1953. The book is also thrown off balance by having too large a disparity in length among the various essays: fully half the text is taken up with the first two essays, while the remaining seven essays make up the other half.
Regrettably, Later Stages is also marred by a surprising number of inaccuracies which the editors did not catch. Scott mis-identifies the Jane Mallett Theatre, for example, and alludes to Maurice Colbourne's success as "Denis" (Dunois?) in Shaw's Saint Joan (38, 39). Mann and Southgate date Hollywood's "talkies" from 1929 rather than 1927 (261). In other essays, one finds the names of Canadian figures misspelled: Robert Crew, Terry Gunvordahl, Debra Hanson, Alan Lund, George McCowan and others. This problem also occurs with American names such as Florenz Ziegfeld, Richard Rodgers and Jason Robards (130, 193, 245). A related issue, and perhaps a more troublesome one, is the number of highly questionable assertions which are allowed to pass as fact. Scott suggests that the founding of the DDF was an early example of government support for the arts (100), which it certainly was not, as Robertson Davies explained in his famous "Dialogue on the State of Theatre in Canada" (1951). Mann and Southgate assert that "the amateur theatre has never pretended to be a training ground for the professional"; but to me, the evidence is clear that the DDF was considered so by the trainees themselves, both in pre-professional companies such as Les Compagnons de St Laurent and in the careers of many individuals. Else why does the book include a photo of a very young Roland Hewgill playing Old Mahon in The Playboy of the Western World (282)?
While such problems are disappointing, ultimately they do little to impair the overall usefulness of Later Stages. In addition to the essays themselves, the photographs, notes, bibliography and index provide excellent references for researchers who wish to pursue any number of topics in Ontario theatre, and will provide vital cross-referencing to all kinds of research in Canadian theatre history. As a book, it does not come up to the standard set by Early Stages; as a resource, however, it might be even more valuable than the earlier volume.