Somewhere Else

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

Somewhere Else is a collection of early works by George Walker that the
award-winning playwright feels have stood the test of time. The plays
are all set outside the North American locales of Walker’s most recent
work. The African jungle is the setting of Beyond Mozambique (1974), a
macabre postcolonial comedy with a cast that includes a Nazi doctor, a
demented Mountie, a drug-addicted pederastic priest, and a porn star.
Zastrozzi (1977) is a metaphysical revenge comedy that is breathtaking
in its theatricality.

Theatre of the Film Noir is a moody character drama whose backdrop is
the moral chaos of the recently liberated Paris of 1944. The final
selection is Nothing Sacred (1988), winner of a Governor’s General
Literary Award and arguably Walker’s finest play, and certainly the
one that brought him international recognition. Adapted from
Turgenev’s novel Fathers and Sons, this quintessentially Canadian yet
timeless work about a society on the brink of transition brought its
author international recognition.