Rebels in Time: 3 Plays

David E. Kemp is head of the Drama Department at Queen’s University.

Mitchell confesses to being fascinated by rebels. He has dramatized the
lives of Norman Bethune, Gabriel Dumont, Nicholas Davin, Tommy Douglas,
Pиre Athol Murray, Archie Belaney, Wu Han, and Sitting Bull. All these
characters, in their own way, were outsiders struggling for justice;
they spoke for the oppressed. Perhaps it would be more correct to call
them antiheroes.

In “Davin: The Politician,” Mitchell tells—with humor,
compassion, and a fine dramatic sense—the story of Nicholas Flood
Davin, the man who articulated the vision of the Canadian West as the
peaceable kingdom. He was a visionary, a poet, a journalist, and a
politician. He was also one of the most significant Irish immigrants to
influence nineteenth-century Canada and if the substance of his
contribution has been underestimated, his style certainly has not been.
“Gone the Burning Sun,” probably the best-known play in this
collection, is a one-man play about Dr. Norman Bethune, a
larger-than-life hero whose energy and compassion totally compensated
for his human failings. He was an internationalist; his sojourn in China
gave meaning to his life. He sacrificed himself for the people of that
country and is the closest thing to a martyr/saint that China can come
up with. It was years before his own country recognized either the man
or his accomplishments. “Gone the Burning Sun” is an intense and
densely written monologue full of humor, violence, commitment, and,
above all, life. The last play in the collection is “The Great
Cultural Revolution,” a fiery drama about an honest man and a fine
playwright apparently driven to suicide by the events of that disastrous
decade of the “Gang of Four” and the “Red Guards.”

These definitive versions of three plays by one of Canada’s most
prolific playwrights can only be warmly welcomed.