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Erin Brandenburg in a Promo Picture for "Reesor"

In my previous Next Stage theatre review, I made a couple of remarks at the opening about mid-Winter theatre festivals being efforts by large summer festival companies to “bridge the gap of their fundraising dry months.” I meant it as a harmless lede to my review, but got taken to task for it a bit by the Fringe Festival in the comments section, and in hindsight it does seem kind of a shallow and poorly thought out thing for me to have written, so I feel compelled to address it.

The Fringe says that Next Stage’s genesis was from a desire to help support Fringe artists outside of the big summer fest, especially new and emerging ones, and to give them a platform to launch new works and take them as far as they can go. They don’t pay the Fringe a participation fee (which is not true of a lot of fests) and get a lot of help in terms of rehearsal space and promotion. After all the support they give, the Fringe doesn’t make nearly enough cash to cover even their own costs.

Truth is, festivals like this are never put on with the express purpose of making money. It was a poor implication. The biggest reason a festival, company, or artist gets involved in something like Next Stage is because they love theatre. That’s the bottom line. I’ve been around theatre enough myself as a patron and occasional volunteer to see it and know it’s true; I just take it as a given and leave it unsaid that everyone involved in a festival like this does it because they love it, but it deserves to be said.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about Reesor.

I also said in my previous review that what initially attracted my lovely companion and I to Next Stage was hearing about Reesor, and more particularly the involvement with that production of Andrew Penner of Panic Manual favourites Sunparlour Players. Ricky saw them at Pop Montreal; I was one of about 15 people at the downtown Legion in Calgary who saw their terrific Sled Island music fest performance last Spring, and I also saw them last month at the Dakota Tavern here in Toronto but was too lazy to write about what a great show it was. We were too late arriving to catch Reesor last weekend, but were lucky enough to get tickets to their second last performance of the festival, a 9:15 showing last night (apologies to Beth Marshall for missing L’Ange Avec Les Fleurs again).

And despite the blowing snow that made the trek down Queen Street West to Factory Theatre kind of harrowing, Reesor was definitely worth the extra trip.

Reesor tells the story of a group of Russian Mennonites who fled persecution during the Communist revolution to make a new settlement in Northern Ontario. It’s told from the perspective of Anna, played by the story’s co-writer Erin Brandenburg, who narrates the story as a series of letters to a sister she believes stayed behind in Russia with her mother as she acts out her life from age 12 to adulthood. The settlement was named Reesor after the man who led the colony there, Thomas Reesor; it’s sort of a historical footnote now. You can still find Reesor on Google Maps and see it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Thomas Reesor brought this group of Mennonites there, where obviously they thought they’d be free of the oppression of the Bolsheviks and their supporters and find ground similar to the fertile lands their people settled in the Russian steppe. The settlers first arrived in 1924, bolstered by Reesor’s patronage and some help from the Canadian government. They tried to work the land for years, but were defeated by the cold and the barren ground.

In the play, Brandenburg is joined on stage by the aforementioned Penner, Gord Bolan, and Dave McEathron. In a neat bit of theatre craft, the three of them basically sit on the side of the stage and play a number of specially designed instruments and just stand up and play certain characters whenever necessary. The three of them play Reesor’s women’s group/sewing circle in falsetto voices; Bolan stands up like he’s a history professor at a lecture, giving some historical perspective and narration once in a while; Penner gets some laughs as Anna’s would be beau Ivan from a group of Finnish colonists, then effortlessly gives Anna’s father a face and voice in just three lines.

Brandenburg is captivating as Anna. She speaks in the manner of many people from Slavic countries when they learn English as a second language, sort of over-enunciating some words. She works nicely at making the set seem more than it is, making cabins and woods and kitchens and baby deliveries appear out of a clothesline strung between two ladders with some sheets hanging off it, a tree stump, a bucket, and some well placed lights. She mimes the difficult duties of a settler woman at home while the men are out working, making meals, cleaning, sewing, chopping wood, etc., but when she rests and pillows her head on her arms on top of the stump, you can almost see and feel her character think to herself “there must be more to life than this.”

The real star of the show, though, is the music. Bolan, McEathron and Penner play banjos and a collection of instruments that look mostly like they’re fashioned from detritus you might find at an old lumber yard, like McEathron’s washtub bass and something that looks like a large combination homemade drum and guitar that Penner and Bolan often play together. Their accompaniment as they play background tunes, make drumbeats for chopping wood, pluck strings and make wilderness noises makes Anna’s storytelling really come alive. Penner sings a mournful tune to please any Sunparlour Players fan; his musical direction really makes the show.

In the end, Reesor isn’t a happy story, but a good one nonetheless. My date, who is of Mennonite stock, said it made her proud of what her ancestors did back in the settler’s days. What makes it a great, though, is Brandenburg as Anna and the music supplied by Penner and his co-performers. January the 18th is Next Stage’s last day, but this is a play that should be going places. See it if you can.

For fun, here’s the Sunparlour Players song “Bless This City”.

 

 Sunparlour Players - Bless This City: Play Now