Mariya Khomutova in The Division.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
- Title: The Division
- Written and directed by: Andrew Kushnir
- Performed by: Karl Ang, Ivy Charles, Mariya Khomutova, Daniel Maslany, Alon Nashman
- Company: Project Humanity and Pyretic Productions, in association with Crow’s Theatre
- Venue: Crow’s Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs until May 17
Critic’s Pick
In The Division, a new documentary play framed by playwright-director Andrew Kushnir as a letter to his young nephew, it’s significant that we don’t hear the word “Nazi” until about 40 minutes in.
In 2019, Kushnir wrote a eulogy for The Globe and Mail about his grandfather – in Ukrainian, his dido – highlighting the watchmaker’s accomplishments as the last company clockman for CP Rail. In the remembrance, Kushnir recalled his grandfather’s massive hands; his booming voice; his ability to capture the passing of time in a symphony of ticks and bells.
But an online comment curdled the otherwise sentimental obituary. An anonymous Globe and Mail subscriber shared their condolences with Kushnir, but pointed out that his grandfather had likely fought alongside Germany in the final years of the Second World War. Kushnir’s dido wasn’t just a member of the 1st Division of the Ukrainian National Army; he was, in all likelihood, a member of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division, sometimes referred to as the Galicia Division, of the SS.
Daniel Maslany and Ivy Charles in The Division.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
The unwanted discovery sent Kushnir reeling: Had he ever heard his grandfather echo Nazi ideology? He didn’t think so. What else didn’t he know about his family’s odyssey to Canada in the 1940s?
Crucially, The Division doesn’t seek to confirm whether Kushnir’s grandfather fought for the Nazis. (Audiences looking for a satisfying answer to that question won’t find one here.) Instead, it examines how the gaps in Kushnir’s genealogy – the questions no one asked the elders before it was too late, the memories that died with Kushnir’s dido – might shape the path of the family’s future.
Unlike the most famous documentary plays – My Name Is Rachel Corrie, The Laramie Project, The Investigation – The Division isn’t an exercise in true-crime theatre. It’s not a history lesson, or even a call to action. It’s a love story.
When we first meet Kushnir – a character in the play as well as its scribe and director – he’s not talking to us. He’s addressing Lev, his nephew, in a letter he doesn’t expect Lev to read until he’s much older. The things he has to say to Lev about their family – and particularly its deceased patriarch – are complicated, he warns the unseen little boy, and might be difficult to stomach.
Maslany, Alon Nashman and Karl Ang in The Division.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Soon enough, he explains the circumstances which led to writing this note – the Globe and Mail article, the anonymous comment, the 19,000-kilometre trip he took across Europe to find answers – and at once, The Division clicks into action like a grandfather clock.
The timepiece’s gears, in this case, are an outstanding ensemble of actors who step in to play everyone from Kushnir’s mother (who seems nervous about the project but ultimately supportive) to Justin Trudeau. Karl Ang, Ivy Charles, Mariya Khomutova and Alon Nashman make miniscule, understated acting choices that suit Crow’s Theatre’s intimate studio space very well, and each new scene in The Division feels like being let in on an additional secret. (The production’s stylish set and costumes are by Sim Suzer and Niloufar Ziaee.)
Daniel Maslany, too, is exceptional in the role of Kushnir – better known within the play as Andrew, or sometimes Andriy. Having interviewed Kushnir about this project a month before opening night, I was dumbstruck when Maslany took the stage. Aside from being the playwright’s visual doppelganger, he also has a handle on the idiosyncratic warmth – with just a hint of mischief – that emanates from Kushnir’s prose. It’s a masterful performance that communicates the contradictory layers of Kushnir’s emotional journey with the wit and sensitivity such a part demands.
Ang and Maslany in The Division.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Writing-wise, The Division is everything you’d hope, generous and poetic as the unanswerable questions of Kushnir’s grandfather tighten around the play like a vise. It’s arguably a hair overlong – it occasionally feels like a 90-minute play in a 100-minute coat – but Kushnir injects the story, serious as it is, with delightful moments of laugh-out-loud humour. A re-enactment of the 2023 Hunka scandal, for instance, in which a Ukrainian soldier with a Nazi military pedigree was welcomed into the House of Commons with a standing ovation, is almost Michael Healey-esque in its skewering of Canadian politicians. Kushnir’s representation of Vladimir Putin – a noseless, skeletal ghoul made animate by a nylon sock – is also hilarious.
That sense of humour, also demonstrated in his superb directorial treatment of 2023’s Casey and Diana, is Kushnir’s superpower as a theatre-maker. He’s able to see charm and whimsy in situations far from charming and whimsical; he’s willing to laugh at things that ought not to be funny. By breathing life into the things that scare him – the murk around his grandfather’s coming-of-age, the uncertainty of what Ukraine will look like when Lev is old enough to care – Kushnir makes feelings real.
Then again, perhaps that reverence for the passing of time, explored so gorgeously in The Division, is genetic: Much like his watchmaker dido, Kushnir has a talent for assembling stories in such a way that they can’t help but tick.