Blyth Festival's 'Quiet in the Land' returns to where it all began

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

Anne Chislett’s Quiet in the Land is one of the few shows that looms large over the Blyth Festival and its reputation... and for good reason. 

 

The Farm Show, The Tomorrow Box, The Drawer Boy, Another Season’s Promise, anything with Donnelly in the title and, more recently, shows like Reverend Jonah and The Pigeon King join Quiet in the Land in that pantheon as shows that started their lives at the Blyth Festival - or, in Huron County in the case of The Farm Show - and went on to enjoy national, even international success. So, when they return home, it’s always seen as being special; a play that made its bones in Huron County, went out and found success in the world, but didn’t forget where it came from.

 

Quiet in the Land feels special, even among the other aforementioned special plays. Last year, when we were doing interviews with past Blyth Festival artistic directors, we learned all about the ebbs and flows of a half-century in the life of a rural Canadian theatre. Quiet in the Land was not only one of its greatest success stories - winning the Governor General’s Award and the Chalmers Award, in addition to subsequently being produced all over the country - but it was one of the Festival’s security blankets to which it would return during its worrisome late 1990s, when it was pulled from the brink of extinction under the watchful eye of returning Artistic Director Janet Amos.

 

And so, it is after the pomp and circumstance of the 50th anniversary season last year that Artistic Director Gil Garratt has returned to plays by two of the Festival’s three founders this year: Chislett with Quiet in the Land and Keith Roulston with Powers and Gloria, set to open early next month. This season’s crack at the show also feels like a big swing. It’s the only show being produced outdoors at the Harvest Stage and, with the entire company in the cast, it feels like the unofficial sun around which the rest of the season orbits.

 

And yet, this production feels different. A story about people - the Amish and their neighbours in the rural Ontario of the early 1900s - being performed outdoors at the Harvest Stage, under the very stars they would have spent many of their nights. Furthermore, this slow (by design) and deliberate character study is being told nearly 45 years after its premiere. So much has changed in that time and yet, there Quiet in the Land remains, suspended in time, telling its story just the way it did all those decades ago.

 

And yet, it remains relevant because so many of Chislett’s themes here are timeless. The clash between the generations, which morals to uphold and which to elide in a changing world, the push and pull between religion and a world that seems to be advancing beyond the need for it and, particularly prescient right now, a world at war with a yet-to-be-determined level of concern for those at home in Canada.

 

When I spoke with Chislett for the Blyth Festival special issue, not only did she confess to not having the secret formula for a theatre hit, despite writing one (if she did, she said, she’d have done it again), but she was also unsure of why a show about an Amish community over 100 years ago has endured with such universal appeal. And yet, those aforementioned themes echo through the halls of time. There will always be a young generation working to have its voice heard and an older generation clinging to its way of life in a changing world. There will always be those who see the value in religion and an argument from those who don’t. There will always be a war brewing and a question of whether to get involved and when. 

 

As for what’s on the Harvest Stage before Blyth Festival theatre-goers right now, the cast is universally impressive, justifying the Festival’s first-ever attempt to have its entire company on the same stage for the same show. All of the actors from the other four shows of the season are here, including some child actors and additional help from Artistic Director Gil Garratt and others.
There are standouts, of course, such as Michelle Fisk’s Hannah Bauman, Shelayna Christante’s Katie Brubacher, Geoffrey Armour’s O’Rourke and James Dallas Smith’s Zepp Brubacher. And yet, at its core, this story is largely about the father-and-son dynamic between Randy Hughson’s Christy Bauman and his son Yock, played by Landon Doak.

 

When Yock opts to eschew his pacifist upbringing to fight for Canada in World War I, he opens a chasm between him and his father that we immediately know will not easily be bridged. It is within this dynamic that the show truly takes flight. 

 

Anyone with a complicated or less-than-supportive relationship with their father will see themselves in the scenes between the two. Arguments played out, shouting matches that no one ever wins and a seeming inevitable final destination of disappointment and a concrete inability to see eye-to-eye. Ultimately, it’s a story of clinging to rules, lifestyles or lines in the sand that, for far too many, supersede the love a father should have for his child. For many, the love for your child is a matter of second nature and it’s difficult to envision life any other way. For others, this is not the case.

 

Quiet in the Land asks difficult questions about what’s important to you and why. It’s slow, deliberate and patient while it examines these themes. Written for audiences nearly 45 years ago, about a community that is historically in no particular hurry, the story unfolds quietly, tenderly and, yes, slowly. This is the rare circumstance in which we should be bending to the art, it shouldn’t bend its will to us.

 

It’s challenging to write about such a well-established piece of art and discover a new angle, almost 45 years later, that no one’s previously considered... and maybe that’s explicitly the point.

 

Quiet in the Land remains on the Harvest Stage - indoors on the Memorial Hall stage in the event of rain - until Saturday, Aug. 23.