Kelsey Kanatan Wavey, Cheri Maracle and Lisa Nasson in ‘Women of the Fur Trade”, Photo by Kate Dalton
“Your mom Manifested my Destiny last night.”
With lines like this, we know we’re not getting a dry and vetted historical rendering of Canada’s early days. What we do get is a delicious arch comedy that doesn’t pull any punches, but lands its satirical blows with such panache that the sting feels soooooo good! Playwright Frances Končan’s Women of the Fur Trade, revived here by Native Earth Performing Arts in association with National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre and Great Canadian Theatre Company, is, at its core, unmistakably angry about our national history and the ongoing mistreatment of Indigenous communities; though Končan knows we can’t laugh unless that anger is channelled into an appealing we’re trapped in this absurdist hellscape together form!
From the top, the first thing we notice is that our three women of the fur trade—Marie-Angelique (Kelsey Kanatan Wavey), Cecilia (Cheri Maracle) and Eugenia (Lisa Nasson)—seem comfortable yet decidedly… unsettled. Costume designer Vanessa Imeson has given them period attire with anachronistic embellishments and contemporary props. This bolsters their vibe, which is—with their quick-witted banter and pop culture references—distinctly of our time.
Together, they hold fort; each sipping from an oh-so-daintily civilized teacup with saucer and sitting in their own rocking chair. This is their space. A platform of raised slats is scenic designer Lauchlin Johnston’s stylistic rendering of a fort in the Red River colony of the late 1800s, but also an entirely mythic place. These women exist across time, rather than in it. And they are trapped, surrounded by the stuffy and imposing portraits of dudes, so many dudes—the men whose history is the official record.
These men are always looking on, over-represented—judging and aloof, idolized and lusted after. Candelario Andrade’s stirring projections give these portraits a surreal, scintillating quality that hints at sentience. Two of these figures will, eventually, manifest before us—Louis Riel (Jonathan Fisher) and Thomas Scott (Jesse Gervais). Fisher’s flamboyantly boastful, carnival barker-esque take on the Métis leader is endearingly obnoxious, giving us a taste of the eccentricities that would later put his sanity in question. Gervais is likewise adorable here as Scott, the Irish Protestant eventually executed by Riel, presented here as a ingratiating, overly put upon side-kick. Though servile and simpering, his darker, more sinister impulses gradually rise to the surface.
Their bumbling journey towards Red River and their fate is juxtaposed with the three women whose way of life is tied to their clownish bromance-feud and its echo of Canada’s formative circumstances—colonial expansion and the Indigenous communities displaced and traumatized by it.
Wavey is infectiously bouncy and excitable as Marie-Angelique, a half-white, half-Native young woman who is all hot and bothered by the charismatic figure of Riel. She writes him girlishly impassioned letters and fetishizes his reputation as a romantic embodiment of Indigenous pride. As the rugged and self-sufficient Native trapper and trader, Eugenia, Nasson has a gritty charm and seems the most grounded of the trio. In between these two is Maracle’s Cecilia, the wife of a prominent politician. At times, she reminded me of Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?; her feminine facade of settler domesticity is so hauntingly desperate and fragile. These women trapped together in a historical continuum care deeply for each other, but as the Red River Rebellion looms large, their political identities and sense of self-preservation test their allegiance.
This is all very silly, with clever and hilarious nods, winks and repartee. There is an underlying sadness which pokes out here and there. Despite the jokey affectations and goofy antics—enriching them, actually—there is a painful truth festering beneath. At a crucial point, Marie-Angelique and Eugenia, in a shared frenzy, dismantle the oppressive portraiture that surrounds them in a truly exhilarating spectacle—made all the more amusing by Cecilia’s discomfiture. The sight of the moon, it turns out, can be intensely galvanizing.
This is a fancifully abstracted space where historical figures have hand-puppet avatars, sticks become guns and letters are delivered by quaint little baskets that drop from the ceiling—branded with the Canada Post logo and accompanied by a hilariously sickly, strained version of “Oh, Canada!” These disarming comic conceits allow for a gentle awareness of our fraught and bloody history. Not being familiar with Renae Morriseau’s original production, I’m not sure which elements were maintained, enhanced or revisioned by director Kevin Loring in this revival. Regardless, it is a conceptually bold and masterful comedy with honest humanity blazing through all the shenanigans.
And I can’t stress this enough: it is very funny, consistently so. I can’t remember being so fully and genuinely amused for an hour and fifty minutes straight.
Women of the Fur Trade
running April 9 to 21, 2024
Aki Studio, Daniel’s Spectrum (585 Dundas Street East)
running time: 110 minutes (no intermission)
Jonathan Fisher and Jesse Gervais in ‘Women of the Fur Trade’, Photo by Kate Dalton