The Crackwalker, starring Claire Armstrong, Stephen Joffe, Greg Gale, and Yolanda Bonnell, runs until April 10 at the Factory Theatre.JOSEPH HOWARTH
If you want to take your mind off the acquittal of Jian Ghomeshi, or forget about the death of Rob Ford for an evening, don't go to see the revival of Judith Thompson's The Crackwalker at Factory Theatre.
This seminal Canadian drama does not skirt away from tough realities, but shines a light right into the darker aspects of the world, the country we live in, the one that is back, but back to what exactly?
Though it premiered 36 years ago, it might as well have been written yesterday in this gutsily acted, intelligently altered revival directed by Thompson herself.
The Crackwalker's opening scene plunges the audience, dizzyingly, right into the moral murk of the underclass of Kingston, Ont., in the late 1970s – when Theresa (Yolanda Bonnell), a mildly mentally challenged woman, is confronted by her friend Sandy (a brilliant Claire Armstrong) about sleeping with her husband, Joe.
Theresa denies anything happened at first, but after hearing that Joe has confessed to a tryst, she claims that, in fact, he had forced himself upon her while drunk. When Joe (Greg Gale) shows up later with Theresa's boyfriend, Al (Stephen Joffe), in tow, he demands – with explicit threat of violence – that Theresa tell the truth.
You may have tweeted #IBelieveSurvivors this week, but who are you going to believe now? Played with a tragic innocence by the startling newcomer Bonnell, Theresa would no doubt be called an unreliable witness in a court of law. She's inarticulate and huffs. She lies frequently, and changes her story. She's mentally challenged – and morally, well, even her friends accuse her of making money by "sucking off queers down by the lido." And did I mention that she's an Indigenous woman, too?
Those closest to her react in depressingly true-to-life ways. Her boyfriend wants to sweep the whole thing under the rug and forget about it; Sandy, though her husband beats her, begins to doubt her friend, or at least doubt the details she's provided.
Joe, the alcoholic, openly misogynist, emerges unscathed – and then the play, this may be the most shocking thing about it, simply moves on. This is but prelude – and you too might soon enough forget about rape.
The Crackwalker, which was written by Thompson when she was fresh out of theatre school after a summer spent working as a social worker in Kingston, doesn't tell us what to think. It simply listens and observes – which is what makes it great writing, even if it occasionally teeters from a craft point of view.
Even the characters of Joe and Alan are not villains. Indeed, they made my mind wander off to the former mayor Rob Ford and some of the constituency whose frustrations he tapped into.
Joe, despite all that I described above plus a penchant for drinking and driving, remains somehow sympathetic, especially in Gale's rooted working-class performance. The CAT driver is as fragile as he is violent – and you see where his anger comes from, an economy that uses him up during booms and then tosses him in the dumpster during busts.
As for Alan, vividly, twitchily played by Joffe in a daring turn that skirts too much, he's an undereducated, underemployed individual skeptical of the elites. That skepticism may, in fact, be well founded when aimed at well-meaning social workers that want Theresa to have her tubes tied. But as he heads toward a mental breakdown tied to his refusal to admit who he is, he, disastrously, begins to believes doctors might be poisoning patients in order to make money.
The root causes of the play's tragedy are as evident as the character's own failings. (It's a love story, too, but a deeply troubling one.)
For this revival, Thompson has rewritten her play a little in the text, but more so in the production. A homeless drunk that Alan frequently runs into, described in Thompson's original script simply as "an Indian man," here becomes a central, shape-shifting character specifically identified as The Crackwalker. His lines have now been translated into Ojibway.
Waawaate Fobister begins and ends the play as this mysterious creature, dancing, interfering, taunting. He's a bit like the Trickster, who plays a role in so many plays by First Nations playwrights (including Fobister's own, Agokwe).
This mythical element doesn't always mesh well – and Fobister's appearances are occasionally distracting, with masks inconsistently and unnecessarily employed. But there is a powerful pay-off at the end of the play when it dawns on you who he represents.
The Crackwalker is the final show of Factory's revelatory, very artistically successful Naked Season. In this case, "naked" means the set consists of a painting hovering above the action by Randi Helmers, lit with purpose by Kaileigh Krysztofiak. This abstract expressionist work looks a womb that is also a gaping hole, with a car's headlights on either side. It feels like a feminist response to de Kooning's Woman.
It worked for me even if the production didn't always. But I appreciate that Thompson took chances. This is not a distracting or pleasant evening at the theatre, but one that gets beneath your skin.
Editor's note: An earlier digital version of this review incorrectly spelled Stephen Joffe's surname. This version has been corrected.