Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

Molly Wood
29 Oct 1994 - The Globe and Mail:
"Our magistrate the Queen" (by H. J. Kirchhoff)

THEATRE REVIEW / This comic drama touches on several issues of particular concern to homosexuals, including the mechanisms of repression and survival, social compromises and the right simply to be oneself

'Our magistrate the queen'

BY H.J. KIRCHHOFF
Theater Critic

MOLLY WOOD
Written by John Wimbs and Christopher Richards
Directed by Ned Vukovic
At Bathurst Street Theatre until Nov. 20
Rating: ***

If playwrights John Wimbs and Christopher Richards accomplished nothing else with Molly Wood, they unearthed an odd comer of Toronto history and revived an intriguing character in Alexander Wood, merchant, magistrate, and the city's first out gay person.

But Wimbs and Richards have done more than just that. They've created a wonderful comic drama that touches on several issues of particular concern to homosexuals, including the mechanisms of repression and survival, social compromises, public displays of affection, and the right simply to be oneself.

(The play gains extra resonance for Toronto's homosexual community from the fact that Wood originally owned the 600-acre property that became today's "gay ghetto" in the Church-Wellesley area; Alexander Street, where Buddies in Bad Times Theatre just relocated, is named after him.)

The playwrights begin with the few facts known about Wood, who emigrated from Scotland in 1797, to what was then called York. From these, they spin a couple of tragic love stories, an oddly pathetic scandal and a hint of war, and some of the cheekiest broad humour around - call it the march of the double entendres.

There are small problems with pace and tone in Molly Wood, currently playing at the radically reconfigured Bathurst Street Theatre, but it's a big, ambitious show with a lot of razzle dazzle and a top-notch, all-male cast, especially Richard Partington in the title role. ("Molly" is a 19th-century slang term for a prostitute or a homosexual; Wood's wooded property was known at the time as Molly Wood's Bush.)

In 1803, when the play opens, Wood is being pestered by his friends Justice and Mrs. Powell (Don Alli son and George Dawson, respectively), who think he works too hard and lacks companionship. Mr. Powell advises him to get "a boy," someone to help in the shop; the more worldly but no more perceptive Mrs. Powell thinks he needs a Wife. Eventually, he more or less gets both in cocky 15-year-old runaway Alex Smith (Sean Power). but only after he writes a hilarious series of letters to his brother soliciting a "muscular athletic" young man to be his apprentice ("I hope your search bears fruit" Partington says archly).

Wood and young Alex have an idyllic summer, but the relationship becomes too intense for the older man, and too public. In this time and place, homosexuality is a capital crime, and even a hint of scandal in this strongly Presbyterian community of 700 could ruin Wood. He and Alex quarrel bitterly, and things end badly.

There are several other plot threads, including Wood's friendship with young Anne Powell (Mark Burgess). In 1810, Wood uses his magistrate's office to con the town's young men into dropping their trousers lor genital inspections - this is historical fact, by the way - and the resulting scandal drives him back to Scotland.

He returns three years later, as the Americans are burning York, and represses his sexuality while devoting himself to rehabilitating his reputation and working with the "Widows for the Relief of the Orphan'd and Fatherless." At the end, he has it out - so to speak - with his nemesis, Justice Powell. "I am Alexander Wood," he proclaims proudly. "and I'm not going away.

The 13-member cast is superb, and the business of men playing women - when it isn't being deliberately milked for gags - soon fades from consideration. The many supporting characters are an played very strongly, but George Dawson deserves singling out for his drolly amusing Mrs. Powell, and Louis Negin is a scream as the drunken Mrs. Stone.

Partington performs splendidly especially in the naughty bits, and even manages to make the difficult transition from the broadly campy first half to the heavier going in the second. But he may have been asked to range too far, which brings us to the problem of tone mentioned above.

Director Vukovic stages his actors imaginatively and, for the most part, keeps things moving briskly over Charles Dunlop's bear-pit set, a sprawling arrangement of platforms, framed rooms and trees. But he does it all in a virtual smorgasboard of styles, including outright farce, high drama, low melodrama, surrealism, romance and even a dash of postmodernism.

Some of this works well, and some of it works less well, but the resulting stylistic clashes distract more than a little from the story and the characters. How seriously can we take the tragic, defiant Alexander Wood of the play's last act, for instance, after he has spent the earlier scenes camping and clowning through a constant stream of nudge-wink crotch and bum jokes?

Still, Molly Wood is remarkably slick and assured for a new work, and there's little wrong with it that couldn't be fixed with some tightening and polishing. Frankly, it's heartening and refreshing to see a good new Canadian subject, with a big cast, serious themes and lots of story.

Richard Partington (right) in the title role and Louis Negin as the drunken Mrs. Stone are part of a superb 13-member all-male cast.