I was initially going to call this story “The Season of Drink” or, possibly “The Season of the Famous Unknown,” but I think I will settle for the “The Season of Roland”
In the seventies the town of Lennoxville was quite different from today, although the changes were under way. It was, of course, a university town with all the old “town and gown feuds” of that mix. This was particularly applicable as Bishop’s had been created in 1843 as Bishop’s College School by Bishop Mountain of Quebec City to train the Anglican clergy of the colony of the Canadas and was affiliated with Oxford University(from which it drew many of its professors). In fact, it remained affiliated with Oxford until 1947 and became something of an undergraduate prep-school/university for the anglophone/Anglican elite of eastern Canada until it began, under financial necessity, to cast off that role and become more of a haven for whoever could afford it. It became to the school of choice for many different, affluent immigrant communities. At one point, in the seventies it had a significantly large Lebanese studentship at the time that the wealthy Lebanese were fleeing there civil-war torn homeland. From 1958 and on to exploding again in 1975.
Whereas other Universities were considered to be drug dens, BU was a drinker’s paradise. If you owned the local establishment (the Georgian Hotel, or, the “G”) you had a gold mine ion your hands. And when some clever faculty members (some from the Business Department) managed to arm-twist the University into letting them open a Brasserie, their fortunes were truly made. Ah well, as the Bishop’s motto goes: Recti cultus pectora roborant –which roughly translates as sound learning strengthens the spirit (or, according to Google, right worship strengthens the breasts). Not that there were not drugs – there were. It‘s just that there were drugs AND booze, and booze was the more ubiquitous.
The other half of the equation, the Town, was at that time still, largely, a farming centre with a fairly prosperous suburb up the hill and some slum landlords here and there about the town who rented to the students who didn’t like living in residence. But it was largely a rural town centre with a farmer’s co-op and an abattoir/butcher store owned by the Nicol family who smoked the best bacon ever made. Winston Churchill had all his bacon (even during the WW2) shipped from Nicol’s. Just to burst the balloon, Nicol’s is gone, the “G” is long gone, main street is, in parts, a dismal strip mall and Lennoxville is no more, it is now an extension of Sherbrooke. But then it was a farm town. One other thing: the only Hydro line to Lennoxville ran from Sherbrooke and in a rural landscape with lots of summer thunderstorms, power failures were as common as once a week. And they could last a long time. Keep that in mind.
In the summer I speak of, 1975, the third year of Festival Lennoxville, the season consisted of three shows as usual. The goal of the festival, in case you have forgotten, was to revive successful Canadian plays and give them a first-class presentation. This may sound odd today, but in the early years of the Canadian Regional Theatre System, each regional theatre operated as an island of its own and the repertoire was not shared – they often were not entirely aware of what each other were doing. So, a show – like Anne Henry’s Lulu Street – could be an enormous success in Winnipeg (where it was commissioned, set and performed) and then disappear forever as each regional theatre focused on its own struggle to find a hit. This happened with a staggeringly regular consistency across the country. There were no shared productions; shows failed or prospered locally and then died. And no one, anywhere else got to see them. The festival wanted to revive them in front of a “National” audience and give t hem a second life. And on that basis the plays were chosen.
The shows that year were The Secret of the World, by Ted Alan, Hunting Stuart by Robertson Davies and Jacob’s Wake by Michael Cook. Let’s start with The Secret of the World. Ted Alan (real name Alan Herman) was, at one time, a fairly important figure in the performing arts in Canada. He was born in Montreal in 1916 and in 1934 he met and became friends with Doctor Norman Bethune. He joined the International Brigade in 1937to fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War at a time when this was a very risky thing to do, as it resulted in being labeled as a communist which cost Bethune his career in Montreal. Alan served as a war reporter broadcasting to America from Madrid. He wrote novels and after WWII he wrote a biography of Bethune: The Scalpel and the Sword. (If you don’t know who Bethune is, shame on you, he is the second most famous man in China after Mao). The biography is infamous for having large chunks(towards the end) that Alan just made up. It was later made into a film starring Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren – and Sutherland and Alan fought tooth and nail over the script throughout the filming. He was later (1984) toco-write the script for John Cassavetes’ Love Stream and was nominated for an Oscar for writing the film Lies My Father Told Me. In the late50’s and 60’s he had a fairly promising career as a playwright in London where he wrote I’ve Seen You Cut Lemons, which was directed in London by Sean Connery (the Cassavetes film was based on it) and several other plays including The Secret of the World. Bill Davis was directing Secret and I got to design the lighting. Ted Alan was expected for opening and he arrived with gusto.
The second play was Jacob’s Wake by Michael Cook. Cook was a Brit – he did 12 years in the British Army. He emigrated to Newfoundland in 1966 and taught English there and became heavily involved in the theatre scene. He wrote several plays set in Newfoundland and helped to popularize the Newfoundland culture and the dialect – he was very good with the dialect. The production of Jacob’s Wake was a breaking of Festival rules as this was really the premier. The major roles were carried by Roland Hewgill and August Schellenberg.
The third play was Hunting Stuart by Robertson Davies. I could spend forever on Davies, as the man had more lives than a cat. Davies first phase was as a Canadian student at Oxford, a Shakespearean scholar and a professional actor. When he returned to Canada, in 1940, he discovered, of course, that there was no acting profession here so he became a newspaper manlike his father. In his spare time, he wrote multiple books and plays, purchased a bunch of newspapers and radio stations and wrote a book on acting Shakespeare. A busy man. In the 50’s he wrote more plays and a series of books of humour under the pseudonym Samuel Marchbanks. He played a crucial role on the Massey Commission which was the impetus behind the creation of the Canada Council and the Canadian Regional Theatre System (he wrote the theatre section of the report) and served on the Stratford Festival’s Board (not to mention writing books about the early seasons). He also (how did he find the time?) began writing novels. In the 60’s he began an academic career at the University of Toronto, culminating in the position of first Master of Massey College while continuing to write novels – particularly the Deptford Trilogy (the best thing that he created) and that began the whispering campaign about a possible Nobel Prize. He followed this with the Cornish Trilogy and he was two thirds of the way into the Toronto Trilogy when he died in 1995. Hunting Stuart was written in 1955 and also featured Augie Schellenberg, Roland Hewgill and a very young R. H. Thompson.
I feel I should say a few things about these actors before getting into the anecdotage. August Schellenberg was an actor of mixed heritage. His father was Swiss-German, his mother was Mohawk. He was born in Montreal and was an early graduate of National theatre School. He was a very talented actor in all types of roles but gained fame and fortune as Randolph in the Free Willy film franchise and as the major indigenous character in Black Robe, in which he was very good. He played the lead in Hunting Stuart as the “mild-mannered” civil servant who swallows a potion (yes, this is taken seriously, although the play is a comedy) and reverts to becoming his own distant ancestor – a sort of Bonnie Prince Charlie/Outlander kind of guy. In Jacob’s Wake he played the sell-out politician son. Roley Hewgill was an actor, also from Montreal, who cut his teeth in the early years of Stratford(particularly with Michael Langham) and worked steadily across the country, although principally in Toronto (as who didn’t in those years). He was a workhorse of an actor if ever there was one. R. H Thompson was a recent graduate of the National Theatre School of gargantuan talent. He would go on to a splendid career and remain very loyal to Canadian Theatre.
My memories of that summer are a bit uneven. I had limited connection with the rehearsal of Secret of the World as I was hired only to do the lighting design. What I do remember was the opening night. Ted Alan had come into town for the opening – he may have come earlier but he was certainly there that night. After the performance the company assembled in the bar which was upstairs in the building adjacent, but connected to, the theatre. That bar loomed very large in that summer in ways that it had not in any other season –with the possible exception of the first season. There was an impossibly large consumption of alcohol in 1975 – not by everyone, but still large. I do not remember in detail the sequence of events except that at some point, fairly early in the opening night party, Ted Alan went back into the theatre and stood on the stage to admire the Secret set. There were still one or two crewmembers in the theatre completing the props strike but otherwise he was alone. The last time that I saw him he was standing centre stage admiring the set of his play. It must have been like a kind of resurrection of a dream that he had held 20 years earlier in London and then lost.
Now you need to understand that the stage at Centennial theatre is about four feet or more above the standard floor level of the audience. This height is adjustable as the floor is, in this part of the theatre, a hydraulic elevator that can come up to stage level to provide a thrust stage, drop down to become an orchestra pit or even descend to the basement to take set pieces to storage. But at this time it was at normal, audience, level, four feet below the stage level.
The next thing that I knew there was a an ASM bursting into the bar yelling “Call an ambulance” and searching for the General Manager. Pandemonium ensued. It turns out that Ted, after having a few drinks in the bar earlier had decided to walk backwards on the stage to better view the set and had walked backwards off the stage. Fortunately, he was quickly discovered by a member of the crew since he had badly injured himself. There were broken ribs involved and possibly a punctured lung. Not an auspicious start to the season, nor a pleasant opening night for Ted. In any event, Ted survived and went on to make the Bethune movie while the play received dismal reviews and died a second, more permanent, death.
The second “casualty of the bar” was an actor whose name I do not know. He was cast as the old father in Jacob’s Wake. The role isa potentially powerful one as he represents the old generation of Newfoundlanders who lived by the fishing trade and the sealing catch and were as tough as nails – and just as unyielding and unforgiving. The Skipper (as heis called) had caused the death of his own son Jacob in a sealing accident that recalls the great sealing disaster of Spring 1914 (soon to be followed by the even greater military disaster of Beaumont-Hamel). The death of Jacob haunts the family – particularly his only brother Winston, who is the main character of the play and was played by Roland Hewgill).
Throughout the bulk of the play the Skipper, who is suffering from dementia (and, in our production, the loss of both legs in a storm) spends all his time in an upstairs bedroom -- occasionally yelling down at Winston from above. As the story of the family unfolds it becomes clear that Winston is a drunk and his sons are moral degenerates (otherwise known as an entrepreneur and a politician) and that there have been several other family losses in various Newfoundland storms over the years. Guilt looms almost as large as the titanic weather and the only positive character is Winston’s enduring wife Rosie. The play is powerful and deeply depressing with an extremely bizarre ending. An apocalyptic world-ending storm strikes (we have had repeated weather warnings on the radio) and the Skipper rises from his bed, walks down the stairs, takes charge, puts Winston to the house/vessel/island’s wheel and the other family members to the sails and shout’s out: “Breaker’s ahead!” Eerie music begins, lighting effects build, the storm howls and the bark of a seal is heard and … blackout. I have no idea how much the audience got but it was a hell of a lot of fun to do.
I doubled as ASM in rehearsals and ran sound for the performances so the storm was at least half mine – the seal was all mine. It was a nightmare to do the finale since this was in the days before any digitalization and I had, during the end-of-the -world sonic apocalypse, at least 4 reel to reel decks and one cassette player running simultaneously. I suppose if I had missed anything, no one but I would have known. But I would have known. Back to the actor playing the Skipper.
The gentleman was very tall, very large and imposing and very drunk. It was the first and last time that I ever experienced an actor showing up for work inebriated. What was most problematic was not that he missed his lines – he usually managed to come in on cue – what was most difficult was that he was on the second story of the set (with no guard rails) and he had a bad habit of falling asleep and rolling around in his bed. We were all terrified that he would fall off the set. This was, as you can imagine, extremely distracting and after a few days even Roley (who had his own demons) was beginning to panic and demand that something be done. And it was. Equity was consulted and the actor departed and was replaced by a very familiar face: Griffith Brewer, props master of Centaur Theatre and a fine actor as well. Problem solved we rolled forward into the seal-haunted apocalypse.
The last show of the season – do not misunderstand this was a Festival so the shows ran in repertory – but the last show to open and the last to close out the season was Hunting Stuart. As described above, August Schellenberg played the genealogically rapt Bonnie Prince Charlie character but it was Roland Hewgill as the experiment-leading, potion-dispensing doctor who carried the show – if only because he had the bulk of the lines. And that’s saying a lot because (and this is important) the show ran a solid three hours. Hewgill carrying massive roles in two plays, was always the consummate professional in rehearsal: on time, lines learned, inventive and hard-working. In many ways he was the backbone of the season.
But after hours was another matter. Hewgill had an over-fondness for the bar, pretty much a regular closer. And it led to other issues, since he lived in town he needed a taxi to take him home every evening. Let’s just say that by the end of the summer he was banned from every taxi company in Lennoxville and Sherbrooke. The locals were used to rambunctious University students but not flamboyant professional actors. Too many drivers resented being regularly hit on by inebriated Anglo fares. But none of this ever entered the workplace and in the end, every member of the company owed a favour to Roley.
My job on this show was two-fold. I designed the lights and I ran them for the show. Since there were very few cues (end of scene, lights down; top of scene, lights up) I got to watch the work in detail. As the summer waned the show seemed to sag – it was a very wordy piece and Davies’ sense of humour was often dry to the point of dehydration. Several times the Stage Manager had to give the general note: “pick up the pace, the audience is dozing”!
At last we came to closing night in Lennoxville. The reality of closing night is often hidden from audiences. It is rarely about parties and celebrations, although occasionally it can be about partings and sadness. Mostly it is about bookings and connections. Contrary to public misconceptions, actors do not make a lot of money, and so, if they can get the work, they will begin a new job the very next day and very far away. In addition, because many have played several roles over the summer, they have been separated from spouses, loved ones, family, friends, their cherished homes for an entire summer. On closing night, they have usually packed before the last show and are ready to go the moment it ends, with reservations and connecting tickets in hand. And so it was on that closing night.
The weather report was not good and that was a cause for concern. The show was sold out and at the “one hour” call, as the audience began to arrive, so did the thunder. Within a few minutes the storm erupted and within a few more minutes the power went out. Management of the Festival had to make a very difficult decision (within the limits of the one-year-old Canadian Theatre Agreement). To cancel would lose the revenue of a sold-out, 750 plus seat audience, not economically inconsequential, but might make some employees very happy by ensuring their travel plans. To wait would jeopardize those plans. Whatever the decision might be, in the end some sort of time-line and plan of action had to be developed. The audience would not wait in the lobby all evening. After a quick management meeting it was decided that the show would be held up to one hour (from eight to nine) and the actors would prepare to perform on that basis. If there was no power by nine the show would be cancelled and the season would be over. So, we began to wait, fully prepared to go to a 5-minute call should the power come on before nine.
The wait was nerve-wracking with multiple hushed conversations among cast and crew and nervous long-distance phone calls: “what happens if I miss . . .” We could hear the audience, piled up in the darkening, non-air-conditioned lobby getting louder as their nerves frayed. Nobody seemed to know where to go or what to do except stay close and watch the clock. Finally, at about 8:45, I was walking backs stage right, when I ran into David Rittenhouse who, as Administrative Director, was going to have to make the final call. “What do you think, David?” I asked very un-brightly. We had both been a few years in Lennoxville and knew the absolute unpredictability of these power failures. In a joking tone of mock anger, he snapped at me: “You’re the Lighting Designer; do something about this.” “OK”, I said and snapped my fingers up at the grid.
The Lights came on. I am not making this up. I couldn’t.
The cast was absolutely furious at me as we all ran to our places. It was the absolute worst case scenario. Starting at nine, a three hour show, finishing at midnight, connections missed, plans ruined. It was a mess. We began that show in absolute fury. And ended it in laughter.
The reason was Roland Hewgill. The show started out fast but flat. It was very clear that everyone wanted to get it over with as fast as possible and, at first no one was interested in concentrating on anything but pace and speed (not the same things). Then came Roley’s entrance and things became extremely manic. He was quick and concise and absolutely clear in his diction – but he was going at double speed, missing no moments, skipping no pauses, but going at double speed. And behind all that speed and precision was twice the energy and double the speed of thought. It was magnificent to watch. The rest of the cast were, at first, astonished and unsure how to react. But then they accepted the challenge and tried to rise, within their individual abilities, to the challenge. It was the funniest most extraordinary performance of the summer. I am not sure how much the audience grasped – although there was more laughter than at any other performance – but we (cast and crew) were certainly awed. At times Hewgill was so extraordinarily funny that he cracked himself up and was forced to resort to the famous “upstage turn” until he could bring his laughter under control. The second time he did this the audience was treated to the entire onstage cast turned upstage, with heaving shoulders and hands over mouths. Because of the sheer number of his lines, when the final – extended –curtain call was over, Roland (with the help of the cast) had taken almost an hour off the show and it ended almost exactly on time.
No one can ever take that away from the career of Roland Hewgill.
