History has always had questions of Billy Bishop. One doesn't shoot down 72 enemy aircraft, go on solo air raids, and rise in 10 years from Ontario school truant to the rank of major without picking up controversy and acclaim.
If the average Canadian historian could sit down with the ghost of Billy Bishop today, they would undoubtedly ask him about verifying the stellar dogfight record he amassed (many war analysts insist Bishop could not have shot down so many). But if Bishop walked into the same room as actors David Leyshon and Victor Dolhai, they would have different questions of the World War 1 flying ace.
"I would ask him to talk me through the experience of flying one of those planes: the sound, the feelings, the cold air," said Leyshon, who portrays the Canadian war hero in Theatre North West's production of Billy Bishop Goes to War. "And I would be curious about how he learned to shoot so well from the plane. The first Canadian military planes in the First World War had Foster-mount guns and only later did Bishop fly the planes that had the gun barrel through the propeller. How did he figure out the logistics of shooting while flying? I'm fascinated by that, although I'm sure I'd have a 1,000 questions."
Dolhai portrays the play's piano player and a young soldier about to head off to the Second World War. Bishop acts as a kind of last-minute mentor to him. Dolhai said if he actually had Bishop's attention he wouldn't ask him questions about wartime exploits at all.
"I would want to know about his life after the war. We hear about how the war was 'a helluva time.' Veterans often say very little about that war. They talk about how it was terrifying but how they never felt so alive. So I would want to know he felt about experiences afterwards. Was there anything that ever gave him those same feelings again: getting married? Having children?"
Like two soldiers in a foxhole, Leyshon and Dolhai are the only ones on stage to carry the dialogue load of Billy Bishop Goes to War. Leyshon has 17 characters to portray, and Dolhai has to carry off the music and act as a narrator.
"It's a testament to how the play is written that it always makes sense when things take their turns," Leyshon said. "It always makes sense when the music comes in, it always makes sense when it turns lighthearted, when a new character is introduced there is a flow. As an actor, you don't have to force a moment of drama or levity because the script does that work for you."
It has been working for decades. Billy Bishop Goes to War is arguably the most famous Canadian play ever written in the English language. It was the toast of Broadway and applauded in London's West End, when it first arrived in those theatres. It won the Los Angeles Drama Critics' Award and the Governor General's Award. It was an iconic script from playwright John Gray and his collaborator Eric Peterson, who catapulted from Bishop on to one of the most recognizable acting careers in the nation (Peterson played prominent roles in Street Legal, Corner Gas and much more).
Both actors in the Theatre North West version said the play rocketed up the theatre charts in 1978 and has essentially remained there because it hits several appreciation buttons at once.
It is thick with drama, it is also slathered in music and comedy. It is about a real person and real times that play prominently in Canadian culture. The First World War, after all, gave Canada its first iconic group achievement under our young flag - Vimy Ridge - and our first individual military star: Bishop.
It also walks arm-in-arm with universal themes of sending young men off to war on foreign soil, the torments of war that spin off in unexpected ways, the laughs that are still possible to have inside of hard times, and that primal reaction all humans have to the strange act of flying.
"It is the 100th anniversary of the First World War, so I think this play has a special role to play in our culture right now. It is a poignant time to revisit this show, or perhaps discover it for the first time," Dolhai said.
"As we age as a country we will want to know more about who we were and how we got to be who we are," said Leyshon. "There is a resurgence of interest in this play because it brings us into that consciousness and touches on a lot of those reasons that Canada is what it is."
Billy Bishop Goes to War opens at Theatre North West on Thursday and runs until Oct. 15.
