Heroines: Three Plays

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

Doolittle, a frequent commentator on theatre in Alberta and an editor at
Red Deer College Press, has experience in compiling anthologies (Eight
Plays for Young People, 1986; Playhouse: Six Fantasy Plays for Children,
1991). The authors represented in this volume need no introduction to
readers.

Now come the surprises. Murrell’s Memoir is a day in the death of
Sarah Bernhardt; Pollock’s Getting It Straight is a night in the
schizophrenia of another woman, Eme. But the third “heroine” is
Tremblay’s eponymous Hosanna, a gay transvestite whose last lines are
“Look, Raymond, I’m a man . . . I’m a man, Raymond . . . I’m a
man. I’m a man . . . I’m a man.” Fortunately, Doolittle, who has
written particularly about the female characters in Murrell’s opus,
uses her short introduction to explain her choice by noting that each
character is in fact at a crossroads of sorts, and that each has
stereotypical characteristics of the other gender: the scripts have a
common theme of placing each in a position of reviewing and re-creating
“his or her atypical role(s) in ‘normal’ society.”

The inclusion of Getting It Straight is another surprise. Both Memoir
and Hosanna have known great success and frequent productions and
revivals across Canada, while Getting It Straight has been uniformly
panned for its redundant scripting, and for being a pretentious
diatribe, unorganized free association (with, however, some fine
passages), and a playwright’s “dark moment of the soul.” Although
it may be unfair to recall such scalding reviews, it is unfortunate that
the anthologist has not justified her choice in the face of such a
reception, and perhaps given an indication of the extent of revision (if
any) after the performance experience. The text as it stands is
challenging, to say the least, and—yes—chaotic. Whether it will
actually be read, sandwiched as it is between two “classics,”
remains to be seen.