THE FLOOD THEREAFTER by Sarah Berthiaume, translated by Nadine Desrochers, directed by Ker Wells, with Oliver Becker, Maggie Huculak, Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster, Kevin MacDonald, Patricia Marceau and W. Joseph Matheson. Presented by Canadian Stage at the Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley). Previews from Sunday (September 22), opens September 26 and runs to October 6, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinees Wednesday 1:30 pm and Saturday-Sunday 2 pm. $22-$49. 416-368-3110. See listing.
A river runs deep through The Flood Thereafter, by rising Quebec playwright Sarah Berthiaume.
Set in a small town on the lower Saint Lawrence River, the season opener for Canadian Stage focuses on June, a young woman whose nightly stripping in the local bar makes all the men watching her cry. The exception is a young truck driver, Denis, stuck in the town overnight.
Tears are an unusual reaction to a stripper, but this is the place where, 20 years earlier, a fisherman rescued Grace, a drowning woman who might have been a mermaid. And she's June's mother, who after her rescue slept with all the village men.
"The play reminds me a lot of the fairy tales I liked as a kid - not the Disneyfied versions, but the creepy ones with a dark warning underneath," says Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster, who plays June. "As a child I didn't know quite what they were telling me, but there was a sense of danger at their heart, whether it was the wolf's masculine energy in Red Riding Hood or the Little Mermaid's unstoppable desire to be human."
Berthiaume's play isn't just Grimm-centric, but also draws on Greek myth. It's no surprise, given that two characters are the husband and wife Homère and Penelope, that the narrative suggests The Odyssey's chapter on Odysseus and the Sirens.
"Penelope, a hairdresser, weaves wigs from the hair of the village men that June wears when she strips," explains Lancaster, a former Soulpepper Academy member who triumphed this past year in The Barber Of Seville and The Ballad Of Weedy Peetstraw. "I see the wigs as protection against the men in the bar, any of whom might be June's father."
A poetic tale blended with magic realism, The Flood Thereafter asks questions about love, relationships and familial duty. Lancaster notes that June has, other than one monologue, the "most grounded, colloquial language in the play.
"Both Penelope and Grace, on the other hand, tell stories that draw on mysterious worlds and the subconscious. When huge things happen in life, things too difficult to cope with, you need poetic language and big imagery and ideas to talk about resolving them."
June spends much of the play "trying to figure things out around her. Since she's the only eligible young woman in this unusual town, it's no surprise that Grace is protective of her, and even Penelope has something of a maternal concern for her. But June, who wants to know what love and sex are, can only have a warped relationship with the townsmen: they're all attracted to her, but they realize that any one of them could be her father."
The tale's mystery is wrapped up in the kind of myths that offer answers obliquely.
"Our director, Ker Wells, told us early in rehearsal that stories like this are paradoxically ‘things that never happened yet always were.' They may be hard to unravel yet hint at situations that are constant in our lives."
Interview Clips
Nudity in the strip scenes:
Penelope's wigs: