The Secret Mask will be revealed by Theatre North West.
In what TNW artistic director Jack Grinhaus called "the best play of our 2014-15 season," local audiences will be treated to a script that was a finalist for Manitoba's book of the year in 2013 and a finalist for best Canadian play in the English language at last year's Governor General's Literary Awards. TNW is the only theatre company in the nation mounting this production in 2015.
The show comes with its grit, its heartache and its innate sense of humour. Part of its success, said Grinhaus, is the way it uses the complexities of people's realities. Like a good script does, he said, it avoids exploiting base emotions and instead peels back layers of reality, so the audience thinks nothing of several moods pinballing around inside the play.
In short, the tale is about a man (George) in his 40s who is summoned to a hospital to deal with his stroke-stricken father (Ernie). The problem between the two is Ernie's abandonment of George when he was only two, so they have no personal connection to each other. In fact, George has to wrestle with hostility and apathy for the man while Ernie must wrestle with being thrust into the keep of a person he wouldn't know even if he had been there all along. Ernie's memory and language have been shattered by the stroke. Yet communicate they must, in this delicate new relationship.
Mark McGrinder knows what it's like to lose a father, and he knows what it is to be a father himself. This role reminds him of his dad which, as an actor, forms part of his portrayal of George.
"Every cliche about a father-son relationship were all hit with us," said McGrinder. "We could talk about sports and talk about movies, but it was harder to get under that surface. And this play is all about wanting to be closer to a father, to understand someone you know but don't know."
In between the two conflicted men is Mae, a healthcare worker who has but a short time to draw out therapeutic progress for Ernie and draw out a sense of caretaker responsibility for George. The actor for this role is Lauren Brotman. She, too, draws upon her own remembrance of losing a family member to put on this character's emotional clothing. In Brotman's case it was a prolonged illness suffered by her mother.
"With my mom, we always started at the most important part of whatever the moment was. We felt the urgency and preciousness of time, so we just cut through all the other stuff and went to the heart of those matters," she said. Mae must necessarily do the same with the estranged pair eyeing each other from across her therapy office.
McGrinder thinks, too, that it's strangely circular how he is portraying the one attempting to break through a communication barrier in this play whereas his first TNW role was in the opposite role. He portrayed an intellectually disabled boy in the Tom Dudzick play Greetings!, able to utter only a few simple words. That was in 1999 and this is now McGrinder's fourth play with the local company, coming here from Toronto for each of those contracts.
Although Grinhaus is in his first year with Theatre North West, and this is the first play he has personally directed, he called on McGrinder out of familiarity. Toronto was Grinhaus's hometown, too, and even there the drama community is small.
Brotman was even more familiar to Grinhaus. The two are a married couple.
"I couldn't wait for Prince George audiences to see how good an actor Lauren is, she really is very special at this theatre thing, but I had to cast her in this role because it's a really deep play to prepare for, we didn't have a long rehearsal schedule, and I knew to pull it off I had to have three actors I could absolutely depend on," said Grinhaus. "I had to really have faith in them because this was going to be an intense period of work."
For the challenging role of brain-damaged Ernie he cast Ottawa actor David Warburton, a veteran thespian steeped in everything from Shakespeare to roles at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. (He was also in the Russell Crowe film For The Moment and the TV movie A Woman's A Helluva Thing with Penelope Anne Miller and Angus Macfadyen.)
"Jack and I have worked together many times, for the past 12 years now," said Brotman. "If you are a couple, and both artists in the same genre, you're going to want to try that. And it'll be horrendous and you'll never do it again, or you'll love it and relish it from then on. I love his direction. I love his process with the material, so I look forward to those opportunities. We both come to theatre from very different personal experiences but we are very connected on our approach. Our vocabulary is the same."
McGrinder knows this scenario too. His wife is also an actor and they have frequently worked together. He said they have to collaborate in another way, as well, like when the call came from TNW to come to Prince George for weeks on end.
"It's so different than my first time working here. I was such a baby then," he said. "I was just married then. Now we have two kids, five and three, and this is my first time being away from them for a job. This play is all about absentee family dynamics, so I'm hoping that will all serve my acting in this role. And the day I get back, she goes into rehearsals for a role she has and I'll have to step up on the stuff at home, so that's the kind of give and take that goes on. She recognized this was a great opportunity for me, and I'll support her work when I get back so she gets to develop her career too."
It helps, he said, that "I know where Tim Hortons is" in Prince George. He is comfortably familiar with the city, the theatre space, and even though he's working with a director new to TNW, Grinhaus and Brotman were familiar as well.
"I know there have been a lot of changes this year for Theatre North West, so I hope I actually come across as a touch of continuity for the audience, a bit of the past, since I've been here for shows a lot of people will remember," he said.
The Secret Mask offers preview performances on April 23 and 24 at 8 p.m., then a run of evening and some matinee shows from April 25 to May 13. Tickets are on sale now.
