SALT-WATER MOON by David French, directed by Ravi Jain, with Kawa Ada and Mayko Nguyen. Presented by Factory Theatre (125 Bathurst). Preview Thursday (February 25), opens Friday (February 26) and runs to March 13, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Sunday 2 pm. $35, preview $25. 416-504-9971, factorytheatre.ca. See listing.
Factory Theatre extends Valentine’s Day late into February by staging one of Canadian theatre’s best-known love stories, Salt-Water Moon.
One of a series of plays involving the Mercer family (others include Leaving Home and Of The Fields, Lately), it’s set on the 1926 evening when young Jacob Mercer returns from Toronto to his home in Coley’s Point, Newfoundland, to woo the woman he adores, Mary Snow, whom he left without explanation a year earlier.
What’s striking about this production is that Kawa Ada and Mayko Nguyen play Jacob and Mary.
“This is an exquisite love story, beautifully written,” says Nguyen. “It’s an often staged classic, so non-white actors traditionally don’t get to perform French’s play. I keep asking myself, ‘Why not?'”
“Salt-Water Moon is one of the most recognized scripts in the Canadian canon,” agrees Ada, “and I recall Justin Trudeau’s statement about his cabinet’s gender parity, ‘Because it’s 2015.’ That applies to work in the theatre, too.
“We’re all Canadian, and plays like French’s are part of our collective culture. This production doesn’t make an issue about the casting. Though we bring our lived experiences to the play, I hope the audience sees us as two actors performing an exquisite, universal love story.”
But there’s much more than love going on here. Jacob’s come back to win Mary, who’s now engaged to another man. It’s not going to be an easy task because she’s also angry about his earlier disappearance and determined to improve her own lot and that of her family. Jacob can’t offer her help with that.
“Jacob was born into a life of lower-class oppression,” says Ada, NOW’s top theatre artist of 2015 and winner of the best male stage actor in last year’s readers’ poll.
“Having seen the injustices and shame faced by his parents, he’s at once shattered internally and filled with a desire to have a better life, a life that includes Mary. The complexity of the writing is compelling for me as an actor.”
Nguyen, whose stage work includes Passion Play and carried away on the crest of a wave, has similarly been exploring Mary’s constricted life: being in service from an early age and trying to help a sister sent to live in a soul-draining institution.
“She has a strong sense of family, and she’s grown strong-willed, stubborn and pragmatic because of her circumstances,” says the actor. “At the start of the show, she’s made decisions that are tough but needed to gain what she wants.”
Director Ravi Jain’s production focuses on what Nguyen calls “the essentials, like class struggle, presented in a heightened fashion.”
That’s partly why, explains Ada, they’re not using Newfoundland accents.
“We want to honour this particular culture, but French said the play has never been about the accents. Speaking with a standard Canadian pronunciation, we’re reproducing the rhythms of the writing it’s the relationship, not the accent, that grounds the narrative. The audience will listen to what’s being said, not how it’s said.”
If the key is the storytelling, how do the actors feel each character wins over the other?
“Jacob captures Mary with his poetry, his way of recounting a tale,” smiles Nguyen. “He’s a romantic who syncs with the fullness of life – charming, exciting and passionate.”
“During rehearsal, Ravi quoted a line from the film Jerry Maguire, ‘You had me at hello,'” adds Ada. “Jacob can’t let Mary go, even after a year. She’s crept back into his heart, mind and soul, so he returns won over.
“But for me the clincher is Mary’s strength and bravery, which is alluring and persuasive. Her refusal to give in to anyone who wants to push her down makes me go, ‘Oh my god, I want to be with that person forever.'”
jonkap@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto
