The Canadian prairie is reputed to be full of hard-working, upstanding, wholesome people. But if you slander those CFL Roughriders, you're in for a fight. And curling...well, to win at curling, that's the kind of thing you might even make a deal with the devil over.
This prairie charm was well understood by one of Canada's premier writers, the legendary W.O. Mitchell (from Weyburn, dontcha know).
Mitchell passed away without needing any help from Hades to craft a brilliant career telling humourous stories carved from Canadian culture, but he did borrow a little from the fable of Faust. It is this tale - an ancient German myth that has been retooled for new audiences by everyone from Christopher Marlowe to the Charlie Daniel's Band - in which The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon is rooted. It is about a humble tradesman who likes to throw some rocks after work with some of the other townsfolk, down at the curling club. But his passion for the game gets the better of him when Satan wanders in and offers to lay down a wager on a game - Wullie's very soul. Now Wullie and three buddies are desperate to keep the hammer in an extra end they can't skip. Can they hack it against the devil and his foursome of Macbeth, Judas and Guy Fawkes?
"In different versions of the Faustian legend, the one who deals for his soul is redeemed in the end, and in some versions he goes to hell. This is W.O. Mitchell here, so it might be funny but it is never guaranteed to be a happy ending, so I'll leave it to you to come find out what happens," said Billy Vickers, the actor portraying Wullie MacCrimmon.
"There are no straight lines in this story, lots of squiggles along the way," said Stefano Giulianetti, the devil in this brier patch. He admitted a lot of the squiggles were his rocks sliding like gutterballs down the long lane of faux ice Theatre North West is building for this winter sports tale.
"It looks so easy, but it is fiendishly difficult," said Vickers.
"I think anyone can get some lucky shots in, but the trick to being good is consistency, which is close to impossible," Giulianetti said. "I got a couple of great take-outs but I couldn't get anything close to the button."
This was all part of the rehearsal method. The cast was taken to the Prince George Golf And Curling Club to get a practical feel for the body language of the game. Giulianetti admitted he even got in some extra practice by convincing fellow cast member Nigel McInnis, a card-carrying member of the PGGCC and avid curler, to arrange some additional coaching when the place was empty.
"It's bocce, shuffleboard, chess, pool, golf, all in one and on a slippery ice," Giulianetti said. "That's what we have to sell. The first table-read the cast does of any play always sounds amazing but then you get out on the rehearsal stage and it all changes. It all goes back to square one and becomes about the details, like the body movements and being comfortable in who this character is you have to play."
"That is the craft," said Vickers. "But the authenticity of our bodies as we perform the curling moves is only a part of it. It is not the centre of the play - the game itself - it is the people and the way we interact."
These two actors know at a lofty level what those thespic interactions are all about. Vickers has become one of TNW's all-time favourite actors - this is his seventh play here over the years if you count both his turns as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol - fitting trips to Prince George into his busy touring actor's schedule and regular work with the Shaw Festival.
"Real estate is a lot cheaper here than where I'm from in Ontario. It popped into my head, I must admit," said Vickers about investing in a city that keeps calling him out to play.
Giulianetti meanwhile has been to Prince George before as a member of Axis Theatre's production of The Number 14. Audiences might also recognize him from television and film work like Supernatural, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Some Assembly Required, and more. He said he had been adopted by the town of Chemainus in much the same way Vickers had been embraced by P.G.
"You do fall in love with other places, that's one of the big benefits of our kind of work," Giulianetti said. "You are immersed in a place, you feel like a local because you are there for a chunk of time, you get to know the people and the community, and they come to see your show. It becomes a relationship."
But, said the actor embodying Satan, even this ancient and beloved profession is its own deal with the devil "and that is never for free. You take the risk of being a theatre professional, but you give up the stability of a more scheduled and structured career. But you give up a lot when you chose the stable career too."
Vickers said there was one year he and his wife - also an actor - "were in each other's presence a total of six weeks" so domesticity is difficult unless communication and understanding are at the forefront.
"If you choose this profession, be prepared, it will bring you wonderful experiences. It will introduce you to wonderful people - almost everyone is kind and generous - but the business is very cold and difficult and unkind," Vickers said, but with a tone of encouragement nonetheless.
Giulianetti said he was looking forward to the audience's reaction to the play. It is a morality tale at its core, it is about community values, and since each community that stages this show has its own views on morals and values, the reactions from the crowd are different from place to place.
"We are mirroring - showing the audience itself. So you'll have to ask yourself what you would do if you ever had to have a conversation with the devil? And the devil is inside us all, in the decisions and life-choices we make, that's what's underneath the whole theme of the play. So the characters and the audience are both going through those questions over belief systems," Giulianetti said.
"When you buy a ticket," Vickers added, "you have a responsibility to buy into the experience and take part in this story. You do that, here in Prince George, I must say. That is one of the reasons I love coming here. You, the audience, live up to that commitment to be involved in the show. I can't wait to see what happens when we tell this story."
The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon starts with two preview performances - Thursday and Friday - with grand opening on Saturday night. It runs until March 4, encompassing the entire spread of the Canada Winter Games. Tickets are on sale now at Books And Company.
