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THE BOOTLEGGER BLUES
Drew Hayden Taylor
Reviewed by Melanie Fogel.
Volume 20 Number 2
This comedy takes place on a "typical Indian reserve" in central Ontario. The main characters are Martha, an abstainer and church-goer, her son Blue, her daughter Marianne, and Marianne's common-law husband of ten years, a band officer and yuppie. Other characters arc Blue's cousin/lover, a paw wow dancer, and 143 cases of beer. Some of the jokes here are very funny, others fall well below the level of sophomoric. The stage is meant to contain several locations, sometimes simultaneously. A shrewd director with a gift for action could exploit the potential for bumps and pratfalls quite successfully. I imagine this would be an extraordinarily difficult play to produce. The actors would need not only perfect timing but would also have to be of a calibre to express their personalities with very little help from the dialogue. In fact, some of it is in Ojibway. Drew Taylor is an Ojibway from the Curve Lake Reserve. I confess I'll have to take his word for how "typical" these characters and their attitudes are. Frankly, I didn't like them. But I suspect that exceptionally strong actors could give them enough charm to make an audience forgive their less attractive qualities. Not recommended for a high school production, but a professional one could be worth seeing. Melanie Fogel, Ottawa, Ont. |
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