A play with a humorous take on Canada's colonial past will open the 51st season at Blyth Festival.
Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion has its opening night Friday on the Margaret Stephens Stage.
Originally written for Canada's bicentennial in 2017, the Drew Hayden Taylor play comes to town at a time when the first Prime Minister is back in the news, having recently had his statue on Queens Park redisplayed.
Artistic Director Gil Garratt said he was excited to launch the season with a production that supports some of the actions outlined by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
"It's critical for arts and culture... it has to be more than making space, there has to be support," he said. "This is not a show that we are doing in a workshop setting for a small invited audience, this is a mainstage show, it's the launch of the whole season, trying to really make sure we're foregrounding it. And I would say the audience here in Blyth is really hungry for this work, I think they're really excited to have this conversation at this point in time."
However, Garratt says there has been some backlash to the play, which he was a little surprised by, because ribbing politicians is a long-running Canadian tradition.
"I had someone write me, who was very upset that we were doing this show, because this show 'disrespects John A Macdonald and makes fun of his legacy.' I thought, we've spent 160 years making fun of John A Macdonald, even in his own day and lifetime, political cartoonists and journalists made fun of him... we have to have that kind of relationship to our history and to our leaders, because it's the only way to have a healthy democracy," said Garratt.
The play isn't just a roast of the historical figure. It's a road-trip style comedy that follows two Indigenous men, Bobby and Hugh, traveling to Kingston to steal the bones of Sir John A Macdonald for ransom to get back something of importance to them, Bobby's grandfather's sacred medicine pouch.
Director Vinetta Stromberg said she was given a great script to work with and an excellent production team, making for a hilarious and thought-provoking performance.
"It's interesting because of the back-and-forth, it's like two shows in one," said Stromberg. "There's the one-man show of Sir John A and all his attitudes and his personality and his drinking and creating Canada, and it gets crazier and crazier, juxtaposed with these two guys and their mission to dig up the bones and hold them hostage."
Stromberg says along with a classic First Nations sense of humour, the show has a strong soundtrack of 80s rock, inspired by the character of Hugh.
The production also features some lesser-known facts about Macdonald, which surprised even some of the cast.
Randy Hughson, who plays Sir John A Macdonald, said the unflattering portrayal was a departure from of the more emotional roles he'll have this summer in Quiet in the Land and Powers and Gloria, but he's had loads of fun and learned a lot about Canada's first Prime Minister.
"I didn't know that he was sort of the architect of the residential schools... he set the stage and put the motion in play to form these sort of things," said Hughson, who is from Kingston originally. "He looked at Indigenous people as being, not nearly as civilized and sort of lower class."
The show also offers ideas on how Truth and Reconciliation could be accomplished in Canada, but to learn that, Stromberg says you'll have to come see it.
Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion premieres Friday at 8 p.m. with a matinee Saturday at 2 p.m.
The show runs until August 3. For more information, visit the Blyth Festival website.