No Great Mischief

Ian C. Nelson, Librarian Emeritus, former Assistant Director of
Libraries (University of Saskatchewan) and dramaturge (Festival de la
Dramaturgie des Prairies).

The French-speaking MacDonalds, immigrants to Cape Breton “who went
first up the cliff at the Plains of Abraham,” are the forebears
repeatedly invoked in No Great Mischief, a play adapted by David Young
from Alistair MacLeod’s award-winning novel.

Alexander and Calum are two brothers separated by age and temperament,
yet each marked by blood loyalty and a fate that scars their family with
the tragedy of sudden loss and violence. The successful one meets his
older, alcoholic brother regularly in a Toronto flophouse, where they
deconstruct the fabric of their past. (Pared-down staging facilitates
the alternating flashback and present perspectives, while dramatizing
the historical parallels and traumas informing their current situation.)
Says one, “We always think of the season we’re not in.” Their
fierce clan identity is touchingly evoked in a wrenching moment when
Alexander visits his grandmother, who is losing her memory. It is the
impulse needed to send the brothers physically back through “shadow
and storm” to their island of origin as a resolution to the play.

Young has respected the dialogue of the novel; he has also distilled
characters and plot into a highly focused stage piece that calls for
Gaelic music and dance where words are simply not enough. His other
works include Glenn, a dramatic key to the personality of Glenn Gould,
and Fire, a “rock ’n’ religion musical” co-written with Paul
Ledoux.