FARTHER WEST by John Murrell, directed by Diana Leblanc, with Tara Nicodemo, Dan Lett, Matthew MacFadzean, Kyra Harper, Christine Horne, Akosua Amo-Adem and Jesse Aaron Dwyre. Presented by Soulpepper at the Young Centre (50 Tank House Lane). Previews from Friday (October 11), opens October 17 and runs to November 9 see schedule at soulpepper.ca. $51-$68, some discounts, rush $5-$22. 416-866-8666.
It wasn’t only homesteaders, miners and ranchers who settled the West, seeking fortune or freedom.
May Buchanan, the central character in John Murrell’s Farther West, is a prostitute who travels from Ontario to Vancouver in the 1880s and 90s looking for an independence that’s difficult, maybe impossible, to find.
“Her objective is to be free, which isn’t easy for a woman in those times,” says Tara Nicodemo, who plays May in the Soulpepper revival. “She truly believes that if she keeps moving toward the setting sun, eventually she’ll find a place void of rules, laws and judges, where people don’t look down on drinking and prostitution.
“Simply because she wants to be an independent woman, May is treated like an outcast who fights society’s assessments and hypocrisy.”
We first meet her in bed, naked with a half-asleep trick. As she recites her history, we get a sense of her ease with her own body.
At the play’s centre is an emotional triangle not of May’s making. She’s wooed by Thomas Shepherd, a young Calgary rancher who wants her to marry him and settle down. The other point of the triangle is Seward, a self-righteous, Bible-spouting lawman who pursues May ostensibly to punish and reform her, but there’s another layer to his fixation.
“Seward represents that segment of the community that frowns on anyone who pollutes clean lives, and he reveals the kind of hold religion had on many people,” says Nicodemo, who has appeared in Le Dieu Du Carnage, Hamlet and Cringeworthy.
“Though he speaks of May in terms of the whore in Revelations, he’s obsessed with her. It’s more than a physical desire for sex, I think, but rather a deep love that he can’t admit to himself.”
Shepherd offers May something possibly more appealing, a chance to put down roots and be happy.
“But that’s not what she craves,” adds Nicodemo. “Marriage represents a prison for her, for she’ll be caught, unable to search for the freedom she craves.
“What she doesn’t anticipate is falling in love with Shepherd, a fact she doesn’t share with him. In this unsentimental world, people don’t talk about their feelings.”
Ironically, just as important to May as her search for liberty is the group of women she gathers around herself in Calgary: the motherly Violet, the childlike Nettie and the sick Lily.
“We see her at her happiest when she’s with them they’re all misfits in different ways. They have a sisterhood, an affection that can’t possibly be shared with the men, especially the johns in their lives. There’s no room in their work for the vulnerability they can allow themselves to feel with the other women.”
Nicodemo appreciates Murrell’s writing for women, comparing his sensitivity and understanding to that of Tennessee Williams and Michel Tremblay.
“The text is poetic, almost operatic, but when the words come out, they feel anchored in realism. It’s amazing that the characters can be so big and yet feel so real. There’s nothing apologetic in the writing.
“Farther West is a brave piece, not an easy show to do.”
Additional Interview Clip
Staging Farther West’s many fights:
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
