Walter Borden in 'The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time.'Stoo Metz
The cancellation of The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time at the National Arts Centre earlier this year was perhaps the most frustrating of the pandemic.
Legendary Canadian stage actor and civil rights activist Walter Borden was set to open this autobiographical solo show in the nation’s capital in February, 2022 – but, after the truckers’ convoy took up residence downtown, the City of Ottawa advised the public to avoid the area and the NAC had to shut its doors for several weeks.
The irony: Just as government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions were finally loosened enough to allow for this live performance, the show was unable to take place because of disruptive protests against government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions.
Seven months down the line, however, Borden, who turned 80 this summer while, coincidentally, playing a character who celebrates his 80th birthday in the play On Golden Pond, views the delay of his production’s premiere as perhaps guided by fate.
That’s because The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time, a new version of a play Borden premiered in 1986 that mines his experiences as a Black, gay man, is now opening the 60th anniversary season at the Neptune Theatre in Borden’s home province of Nova Scotia (Sept. 6 to 25, Fountain Hall Stage).
Over the past few weeks, Borden has been able to return to a number of locations in Halifax and his hometown of New Glasgow where pivotal moments in the play take place – or where he wrote parts of earlier incarnations. “It helped to solidify so much of what this piece is,” the actor told me over the phone last week, following a “cue-to-cue” rehearsal with director Peter Hinton-Davis.
The “icing on the cake,” according to Borden: On the day of the last day of the run at Neptune, there will be a ceremony to rename the Halifax theatre’s recently redone green room the Walter Borden Green Room.
The Order of Canada and Order of Nova Scotia recipient’s history with the space dates almost all the way back to Neptune’s opening in 1963. Borden gave his first performance on its stage in 1966 as Pooh-Bah in a Dalhousie University Glee and Dramatic Society production of The Mikado.
In the centennial year of 1967, Borden performed on Neptune’s stage with the Inglewood Community Players, the first Black theatre company in Nova Scotia, in a seminal show called Coming Here to Stay. It was part the Dominion Drama Festival and later toured to Expo 67 in Montreal and to Toronto.
In the ensuing decades, Borden has been a regular fixture of Neptune Theatre productions – from The Gospel at Colonus to Man of La Mancha to Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna.
“Walter’s words, stories, indeed, his very breath is embedded in the foundation of Neptune,” says Neptune’s current artistic director, Jeremy Webb, in a statement.
As for rescheduling The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time at the NAC’s English Theatre in Ottawa, Borden says he’s in talks about dates with the company, which is in a leadership transition. (New artistic director Nina Lee Aquino started last week.)
Possible presentations in Montreal and Victoria are also in the works. And a Toronto stop has been secured: The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time will open the Tarragon Theatre 2023-24 season, Borden reveals.
Incendies: A fire broke out in the lobby of the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto last week. The acclaimed east-end storefront theatre company, run by Ted Dykstra and Diana Bentley, is assessing the damage but is still planning to continue on with a 2022-23 season currently set to begin on Sept. 25 with the return of Jani Lauzon’s Prophecy Fog.
Another fire, this one last month in Montreal at Le Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, struck in a section of the building that is under construction. That led to the cancellation of a run of Robert Lepage’s Sept branches de la rivière Ota.
Let’s hope that’s it for this revival of an old theatrical trend.
Opening this week across the country
Vancouver: The Arts Club is kicking off its fall season with Peter Pan Goes Wrong (Sept. 8 to Oct. 16) – in which the fictional Cornley Drama Society’s production of J.M. Barrie’s famous play goes, well, wrong. It’s part of the British theatre company Mischief’s international “gone wrong” franchise that has gone very right from a box-office perspective since it started with The Play That Goes Wrong in 2012.
Calgary: Misery, William Goldman’s stage adaptation of the Stephen King novel of the same name, hits Vertigo Theatre from Sept. 10 to Oct. 15. Jaime Dunsdon is directing the thriller with Haysam Kadri playing romance novelist Paul Dunsdon – and Anna Cummer playing his “number one fan.”
Barrie, Ont.: Yes, Talk is Free Theatre is still a Barrie theatre company despite dominating the nominations in the Dora Mavor Moore Awards musical-theatre division in Toronto this year. Its new free performance festival Giants in the Sky takes over the city’s downtown for the next two weekends (Sept. 9-11 and 16-18) and is a reason for locals to rejoice – and others in the Greater Toronto Area to pay a visit.
Montreal: Les 7 doigts de la main, a Quebec circus troupe that is close to my heart, is opening a show close to its own. My Island, My Heart (Mon île, mon coeur) is the first show in the new Studio-Cabaret in Espace St-Denis and has performances in both English and French (Sept. 10 to 24).
What The Globe and Mail is reviewing this week
Uncle Vanya, a new adaptation of the Chekhov classic by Liisa Repo-Martell and directed by Chris Abraham, opens in previews at Crow’s Theatre in Toronto tonight – and to critics on Friday. Martin Morrow will be there to review.
I’m spending a last week in Stratford, Ont., where the delayed world premiere of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Hamlet-911 was supposed to take place on Wednesday - but, I just learned as this newsletter was about to go out, has had to be pushed back again due to COVID-19 cases.
Another new Shakespeare-inspired play by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan, called 1939, is still set to have its opening at the Stratford Festival on Sunday. Look for my review next week. Fingers crossed.
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