The Dunsmuirs: A Promise Kept

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

Texas has oil and J.R. Ewing, Nanaimo has coal and the Dunsmuirs. A
Promise to Keep is the second of a three-play chronicle. Striving to be
Dynasty, it falls somewhere between a pageant and a piиce d’occasion,
or perhaps one should say location. There is nothing subtle about it.
From the start, the author gives away the ruthless conniving for money,
the problems with drink and the family disharmony. Overweening ambition
and class-consciousness are abetted by Canada’s first prime minister.
And there’s sex too.

The playscript’s writing is sloppy and cavalier. You know you’re in
trouble when you read a stage direction such as “She begins to sob
again.” The scenes reel off like short video shots in a variety of
locations, with the author paying absolutely no attention to the
niceties of time for actors to make the prescribed costume changes. If
this is the development of Langley’s talent since Bethune, he appears
to have lost it.