Fair Liberty's Call

David E. Kemp is a professor of drama at Queen’s University and the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Fair Liberty’s Call, by two-time Governor General Award winner Sharon
Pollock, brings history alive as it takes an unflinching look at the
human condition and the roots of Canadian nationhood. The play is about
a United Empire Loyalist family in 1795 that, having fled Boston and
relocated to New Brunswick, is hosting a reunion to commemorate the fall
of Yorktown in 1781. The family is joined by two veterans and a
stranger; the latter, they assume is a former Loyalist soldier. The
stranger, however, reveals himself to be a Rebel, who, while holding the
family at gunpoint, demands justice for the death of his younger brother
at the 1780 Battle of Waxhaws. The family has until dawn to choose which
of its members will be sacrificed. As the Loyalists debate who among
them is the least worthy to live, each is forced to confront his or her
own actions and conscience.

Powerful and provocative, this is Canadian drama at its finest. The
play, blending history, poetry, and mystery, is intelligent,
imaginative, and full of integrity; like all fine plays it transcends
the specifics of its own time and locale, and explores wider and more
timely themes in a way that is both entertaining and informative.