THEATRE REVIEW: OIL AND WATER

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
19 APR 2012
R: 4/5

In the whole nature vs. nurture debate, the topic of racism is pretty much a non-starter, at least in the theatre world, where artists have been weighing in on the side of the angels since Shakespeare was a pup. That said, playwright Robert Chafe seems to have stumbled across a good story — and a true one to boot —  that promises to add grist to the ongoing debate. Not surprisingly, it’s a story he found it in his native Newfoundland, where he and long-time collaborator Jillian Keiley (with whom he successfully collaborated on the acclaimed Tempting Providence) have long laboured.

Titled OIL AND WATER and produced by Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland, it’s the tale of Lanier Phillips, an American sailor who washed up on the shores of Newfoundland following an horrific shipwreck in 1942. Half-frozen, he was taken in by the residents of St. Lawrence, a small and impoverished mining town, and nursed back to health, just as countless hapless sailors have been by generations of Newfoundlanders.

What made Phillips’ tale extraordinary however, was the fact that he was a black man who had never before been treated like he was just folks by white people — and once he found himself dealing with people who hadn’t been taught to mistrust him on the basis of the colour of his skin, it dawned on him that the mistrust he had been taught to feel for white people might be misplaced on occasion as well and he returned to America to work for racial equality and harmony.

OIL AND WATER opened Wednesday on the Factory Theatre mainstage, the cornerstone of an increasingly exciting annual rite of theatre known as Performance Spring. To bring the story to life, Chafe and Keiley have assembled an impressive team and turned them loose on an wonderfully adaptable and powerfully evocative set designed by Shawn Kerwin, lit by Leigh Ann Vardy.

Phillips is played as a young man by Ryan Allen and in an older configuration by Jeremiah Sparks, while Petrina Bromley and Jody Richardson essay the roles of Violet and John, the St. Lawrence couple who give him shelter from the storm, rising above their own problems to help a man in need. These four performances, each marked by a simple, touching dignity, are reflected by a strong supporting cast that includes a haunting Neema Bickersteth (embodying Phillips’ powerful racial memory) and a quirky Alison Woolridge and a youthful Mark Power, as memorable St. Lawrence townsfolk.

The story plays out in parallel worlds set more than 30 years apart — on the impoverished Rock of the Second World War and in a race-riven Boston, circa 1974. They are tied together, however, by Andrew Craig’s rich musical contribution, which uses gospel to capture and reflect the rich musicality of both cultures.

As she has demonstrated so effectively on other occasions on this stage, Keiley (recently named head of English Theatre at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre) can be a powerful stage force, and she achieves sustained periods of breathtaking honesty and simplicity. In fact, she only trips up when bogged down in cast busy-ness, or by a playwright determined to make his audience understand that this is A Very Important Life Lesson. If he’d placed more trust in his audience and his story, one suspects this could have been a very important play.