John Margeson
W. 0. Mitchell has always written with his ear attuned to speech, though one could seldom fault his eye or his other senses. His special interest in speech may have something to do with his long experience with radio plays, the 'Jake and the Kid' series in particular, though one suspects it may also be due to his personal appreciation of speech patterns and his love of tales well told from his early experience of life. Dialogue bas always played a major part in his fiction, often more important than description or narrative, as in his most recent novel The Vanishing Point. Drama would therefore seem to be an inevitable development in his writing career, and the five plays in this volume dating from 1976 to 1982 (according to performances listed in the text) appear to confirm this view.
In a brief introduction to the collection, Mitchell writes enthusiastically about the kind of collaboration between author, director, actors and audience which the theatre affords. One statement, however, suggests that something may be lost in the transition from fiction to drama:
The playwright invites his audience to be involved spectators and listeners; a novelist wants his readers not only to watch and to listen but to enter envelopes of consciousness as well, giving the illusion of inner dimension belonging to humans alone.
The novel is, of course, more extensive than the play, allowing
room for the development of 'envelopes of consciousness'. Mitchell's adaptation
of his 1962 novel, The Kite, into a play is a most interesting example
of the advantages of the theatrical form in dramatic pointing, compression
of the action in time and place, and the development of character through
dialogue; yet the play also shows some loss of the introspective qualities
of the novel, and of the rounding out of character which the slower pace
of the novel permits.
Three of the plays take us into familiar Mitchell territory, the small prairie community isolated to a large degree from the rest of the world. In The Kite and The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon we encounter the clash between conventional, morally complacent characters and outrageous eccentrics who gain much enjoyment from shocking the sensibilities of their neighbours, while the moderates or liberals try desperately to keep their footing in the dangerous territory in between. There is superstition and religious dogma in great variety, a link with Robertson Davies' portraits of small-town Canada. What Mitchell presents in essence is the confrontation between those who embody the free, untrammeled lust for experience (the frontier) and those who guard the conventions and codes of the community (the garrison). In The Kite, Daddy Sherry who is about to be 117 years old can say what he pleases with the freedom of extreme old age; only the small boy, Keith, can be a real ally. Mitchell is very good at this sort of thing. He combines satire, through various caricatures of the narrow and hide-bound, with admiration for the freedom of the individual imagination in those characters that have the capacity for such freedom. The contrast is familiar enough to have become almost a fictional or dramatic cliché in western literature, and yet in Mitchell's hands it is still capable of giving much enjoyment.
The Devil's Instrument presents an isolated Hutterite community where the pressures to conform are very much greater than in the small towns of the other plays. The boy from the community who loves music and secretly learns to play a mouthorgan is sensitively portrayed. He is reluctant to leave the community because of a girl he loves there, but finally a break is forced upon him.
Two of the plays depart from the pattern I have been describing. Back to Beulah and For Those in Peril on the Sea are psychodramas, concerned with the mentally disturbed and the mentally retarded. Yet there are small 'communities' in each play where one can see the desire for power or influence operating through moral dominance and religious self-righteousness. Back to Beulah sets the power drive of the psychologist against the power drive of one of the patients, who has religious fantasies, with considerable intensity. In For Those in Peril, a similar effect is somewhat dissipated by the characters surrounding the three central figures, who are onlookers rather than true participants in the dramatic action. It is as if Mitchell had wished to moralize his tale through these other characters.
Mitchell's characterization is often highly effective. The characters with vigorous imaginative power and a gift of language, like Wullie MacCrimmon and Daddy Sherry, are splendidly theatrical. Mitchell displays also a fine gift for caricature in such lesser figures as Dr Wilson, head of the Beulah Mental Institute in Back to Beulah, and Harold Motherwell, the television producer in The Kite. What might be called the straight characters - Helen Maclean in The Kite and Margaret Arnold in For Those in Peril - may not be as interesting theatrically but they are nevertheless alive in their difficult, frustrating and nerve- stretching situations. Much of Mitchell's comic gift lies in his portrayal of the exasperation of the sensible characters as they try to cope with the outrageous and the unbalanced. His small boys, as in his fiction, are sympathetically but not sentimentally drawn.
Any consideration of Mitchell's work in drama should take note of his awareness of the complementary techniques of radio, television, and cinema. Several of his plays have been produced in various media, though in their printed form they appear to be directed at particular modes of production. Thus The Devil's Instrument is clearly written for television: its numerous brief scenes build up a montage of the Hutterite community in its daily life, and it makes an obvious use of film images and sound effects to fill in background. Others of the plays have a recognizable two or three act structure appropriate to the theatre, and show an effective use of staging techniques. Yet these plays also have the flexibility of form and the vitality of language that make them capable of adaptation into other media. One hopes that the plays in this collection represent just the beginning of Mitchell's dramatic career.