Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

Molly Wood
28 Oct 1994 - The Sun:
"Hooray for Molly Wood" (by John Coulbourn)

Hooray for Molly Wood

John COULBOURN
Theatre

"Some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them."

Alexander Wood certainly wasn't born great, and during his lifetime, achieved more in the way of notoriety than of greatness.

But now, 150 years after his death, playwrights John Wimbs and Christopher Richards have thrust greatness upon him. And if, in Molly Wood, they haven't exactly achieved a tailored drape, they have padded him out with enough heart that Wood doesn't come off looking the fool. The show opened this week in the Bathurst St. Theatre.

Wood was Toronto's first gay man - of European origin, at any rate - and the show's title combines his name with the then popular term for gays and prostitutes.

A Scottish shopkeeper with an easy charm, Wood was one of Toronto's earliest residents, quickly establishing himself as part of the faux gentry taking root in muddy York. He cast himself as both magistrate and merchant prince and played both roles well.

But scandal soon muddied his name, as his liaison with his apprentice drew public attention - and then, when he used his position as magistrate to gain intimate access to the private parts of some of the town's male citizenry, he found himself banished to the land of his birth. He later returned and settled serendipitously on the land that now constitutes Toronto's gay village.

In reviving his story, Wimbs, Richards and director Ned Vukovic have created a sprawling epic that echoes their protagonist's search for sexual identity. But where Wood had only gay and straight options, this trio has the entire theatrical grab bag at their disposal. And in answer to just what they've created - Love story? Drama? Melodrama? Comedy? Musical? Drag revue? Polemic? Apologia? - their answer would seem to be "All of the above!"

Vukovic's normally astute theatrical vision is reduced to the narrow confines of a traffic controller as his 13-member cast struggles manfully (all the women's roles are played by men in drag) to subdue the playwrights' ambitious vision. There's some impressive work going on here - Richard Partington manages to cut through some high camp to give Wood a very human aspect, while George Dawson and Louis Negin (though neither is ever likely to be named Miss Toronto) manage to add heart to roles that would be two-dimensional in the hands of lesser actors. But much is lost in colliding visions.

Still, in the end, miraculously, it works. The standing ovation the show earned in the second night of its run was earned, not by the finesse of the production, but by its tremendous heart.

But it was earned, nonetheless. Nobody can say it was thrust upon it.