Review: Sir John A. opens Blyth Festival season by asking tough questions

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

On Friday evening, the Blyth Festival kicked off its 51st season in style with Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion, starring Richard Comeau, James Dallas Smith, Madeline Kennedy and Randy Hughson. This year, the always very-Canadian festival decided to double down by declaring that this season’s entire slew of shows are all about exploring the ephemeral identity that is being a Canadian. 

 

There are a lot of shinier facets of our nation’s history than the one playwright Drew Hayden Taylor is here to show us. Canadians are often quick to mock the intolerance of our American cousins, but we tend to shy away from the fact that our own nation’s abhorrent treatment of its Indigenous people is just as Canadian as maple syrup and hockey. 

 

It was a big risk to set this season’s tone with Taylor’s rollicking, satire-soaked road trip through Canada’s darkest parts, but it paid off, big time. Sir John A is a hard play to pin down - on the surface, it seems like a simple buddy comedy - just two old friends, Bobby Rabbit and Hugh, leaving the reservation and hitting the open road in an attempt to steal the skeleton of Sir John A. Macdonald. And there are some genuinely funny moments in this show that help the proverbial medicine go down. 

 

As Macdonald, Hughson really lets loose every time he takes to the stage for some old-fashioned, drunken rambling, and it’s never not funny. The heart of the production lies less in the madcap adventure and more in how it both untangles and retangles Macdonald’s legacy - is he the visionary architect of Confederation? Or the ultimate architect of Indigenous dispossession? Or both? Taylor resists the temptation to paint Macdonald as a villain, and Hughson portrays the man with a myopic pragmatism that is both charming and pathetic.

 

As Hugh, Smith is also adept at winning people over with some tried and true comedy bits - the broader, the better. A little classic rock, a bad and inescapable pun, a touch of physical silliness, and just like that, the audience is lulled into a false sense of security. And that’s the moment when Taylor slips in a few sharp shards of hard truth - and the audience is receptive and ready to listen, at least while sitting together in a dark theatre.