Written on Water, CanStage's current production, manages to scale the slippery slope and hold firmly onto the ideas being expressed by the playwright, who has allowed water to become a metaphor for belief, for life, and for destruction — biblical and literal. Director Micheline Chevrier has given shape to these ideas with the help of a fine cast, a well-executed set, and spot-on lighting and sound.

The basic story is about how after the mud slide, the members of a writing circle make a reluctant attempt to recover their now water-soaked and so lost written history, both personal and general. The circle was created after all the young people left their village: the trees had all been cut and with them all jobs had vanished. Youth leaving the old behind is a familiar story in rural Canada, although most villages probably don't have a writing circle that records every daily event in the community's life. No doubt, like the villagers in this play, in real life many old people feel abandoned by their offspring when they move away. They leave their parents with a deep sense of loss, the same kind of loss that in Written on Water is very palpable.

In the village of Written on Water, the writing circle is led by Samuel (David Fox), a retired, clearly obsessive and autocratic, teacher. His now reluctant members are Claire (Doris Chillcott), William (Jerry Franken), William's wife Dorothy (Barbara Gordon), Samuel's sister, Martha (Carolyn Hetherington), and the only young person left in the village, the orphan Danny, referred to as Danny-the-lonely-child (Jordan Pettle). Not only do the adults want to rewrite their personal histories to put themselves into a better light, but at the same time they try to find a way to tell Samuel that it is all futile and that it is time to move on.

In the end it is Danny, a youngster with an extraordinary memory and ability to write, who assists Samuel in the task. It becomes a struggle between youth and age. To say who wins would give away the story. Let me say that it is a hard struggle, and the ending leaves the viewer both exhausted and satisfied at the same time.

The play opens with Danny visible through the ruins of the old gym in which the writing circle used to meet. We see the youngster make strange, balletic movements, his arms extended above his head, moving an object to and fro. It sets you on edge because there seems no purpose to the movements. Eventually their reason will be revealed, and so they set the theme for the play, which is in one aspect all about revealing.

There is a great deal of humor written into what is essentially a dark subject. Confronting age is not easy, and for the younger audience it must seem quite a giggle when the humor creeps in. For those of us who are closer in age to the characters, the play becomes a mirror that calls on us to laugh at ourselves, which isn't quite so easy. Claire is the most obvious comic character, muddle headed and prone to quoting cliches garnered from Reader's Digest and other publications. Chillcott does an excellent job with a character, who is always "too nice" and would much rather do the opposite of what she ends up doing. For cat lovers, there are moments, when we have to especially keep our sense of humor. Claire has a thing about Martha's cat not to be reveal here.

Each of the adult characters in this play has a hidden self that slowly unravels before the audience's eyes. It is very well done, this unraveling. Samuel has the most to unravel, and Danny helps him to reach inside to, literally, peel away the outer layers of his self at the climax of the play. Fox handles this wrenching moment exceedingly well. It is an admirable ending to a hard play that in itself is a metaphor for all sorts of things, and then is all about metaphors, those metaphors Claire never really understood until after the fact.

Written on Water, a co-production with the National Arts Centre, Ottawa, plays at the Bluma Appel Theatre,
St. Lawrence Centre, Toronto, until February 14, 2004.

Copyright © 2004-8 CamKohl Arts Productions