Yukonstyle focuses on
native people issues

Play examines repercussions of Picton murders in the Whitehorse area

By Byron Toben

Nine months ago, the powerful Centaur production of Pig Girl by Colleen Murphy described the terrible events at the Pickton pig farm where many women, mostly native, were slaughtered.

Now comes Yukonstyle by Sarah Berthiame, which uses the reportage of those Vancouver killings to examine repercussions in the Whitehorse area.

Talisman theatre, whose mission is to translate and stage Quebec French plays into English, has assembled a fine cast for this production, which was translated by Nadine Desrochers.

You can’t go wrong with anything Chip Chuipka is in and this play is no exception. Here, he is Pops, the disabled folk singing French Canadian father of native Garin, broodingly portrayed by Justin Many Fingers. Justin’s mother “disappeared” when he was only two and no reason as to why or where.

Garin lives, platonically, in a trailer with Jasmin “Yoko” Chen, a Japanese immigrant to Canada who is a chef at a local diner where Gavin is the dishwasher. All is disrupted with the arrival of Kate (Julia Borsellino), a penniless pregnant 17-year-old attired in a baby doll skirt, freezing in the Northern clime. Yoko takes her in over Gavin’s objections. Kate is youthfully naive and incredibly gauche in her spontaneous comments.

The Picton reports increasingly raise Gavin’s suspicions that his mother was a prostitute who may have vanished earlier in a dire way. Pops’ alcoholic hallucinations include the mythological Raven, here a harbinger of approaching death (not merely quoting, as in Poe’s poem).

Allusions to unemployment and lack of opportunity are also made.

This play has drawn praise in Toronto and Europe. I would recommend it, but found it a bit long at two hours without intermission. An intermission would be wrong, as it would break the mood of a serious play with little humorous relief. Perhaps some judicious editing to reduce it by, say 10 minutes?

Also, as in other Talisman selections, it is a bit jarring to have ordinary characters suddenly declaim poetic monologues about the cold but barren beauty of the North.

Anyway, who am I to quibble about the play’s critical acclaim? Ms Berthiaume is only thirty and Yukonstyle her 5th play. I note she also drafts film scripts including a possible adaptation of Yukonstyle. While watching this stage version, ably directed by Genevieve L. Blais, it occurred to me that it indeed had filmic attributes, which would reduce the characters having to often act as narrators in addition to reacting with each other.

Yukonstyle continues until October 29 at Théâtre La Chapelle.

Information and tickets at 514 843-7738 or lachapelle.org/en/Tickets

Images: Maxime Côté

Byron Toben is the immediate past-president of the Montreal Press Club