Twenty Years at Play: A New Play Centre Anthology

Terry Goldie is an associate professor of English at York University and
author of Fear and Temptation.

A few years ago, the complete gap in representative anthologies of
Canadian drama in English was filled by the almost-simultaneous release
of three. The best of these, both in selection and in editorial support,
was Wasserman’s Modern Canadian Plays. It ranged across Canada, with
selections from British Columbia to Newfoundland. This, his new volume,
is much more restricted: restricted geographically, to Vancouver, and
restricted to one enterprise, the New Play Centre.

Yet the anthology’s effect is exactly that intended by Wasserman; to
show that the results of the Centre have been far from local. The list
of playwrights—Tom Cone, Sheldon Rosen, Margaret Hollingsworth, John
and Joa Lazarus, Tom Walmsley, Betty Lambert, and Ian Weir—would be
respectable in any Canadian anthology. And the one name that was new to
me, Alex Brown, also proves to be a worthy inclusion.

There is good variety in the forms of these plays as well. Probably the
best known is Tom Cone’s Herringbone, a fine example of the
one-actor-with-musician show made so popular by Eric Peterson and John
Gray with Billy Bishop Goes to War. Billy Bishop has been published in
Wasserman’s earlier anthology, and Peterson and Gray were the first
performers of Herringbone, so this publication provides comparisons all
around. Also although Herringbone is the earliest piece in this
collection (first produced in 1975), a new production of it is now
making waves in Vancouver, so Wasserman also gets points for timing.

Of the other plays, many are very interesting, and all are respectable
choices. The most recent—The Wolf Within, from 1989—while rather
traditional in form, is a precise exploration of deep religious and
sexual crises very much a part of contemporary Canada. One play I
don’t like, Sheldon Rosen’s Ned and Jack, which seems a rather
familiar version of the off-stage drama of famous thespians, is
justified by its many productions, including Stratford and New York. As
Wasserman’s note claims, even its one-night run on Broadway makes it
representatively Canadian.

The selections are good, and the notes, both for the New Play Centre as
a whole and for the individual playwrights, plays, and productions, are
excellent. Once again, Wasserman has made a significant contribution to
our knowledge of Canadian drama.