Governor General’s award-winning playwright Catherine Banks’ fine adaptation of The Mountain and the Valley is set right on the land that inspired the novel.
The two-hour and 20 minute play, co-produced by Halifax’s HomeFirst Theatre and Two Planks and a Passion Theatre, is a wonderful opportunity to experience Ernest Bucker’s 1952 classic with a stellar cast and within a gorgeous landscape.
Buckler’s tale of a tormented, visionary, young writer and the Annapolis Valley farming community he both loves and hates is staged in a mountain-top field at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, outside Canning, to August 11, in 6 p.m. and matinee shows.
The audience looks beyond a mown grass stage including a wooden platform and old kitchen chairs to tall grasses, rolling hills and forest; nearby is a copse of sumac. The “mountain” figures hugely in the novel as both a physical and spiritual apex and here the story is told on the North Mountain just as its starts its cascade towards the sea.
At the drama’s centre is David Canaan, a sensitive and smart 14-year-old out of step with the tough, hardworking farm men and boisterous, ribald boys of his community.
The play is both a wonderful picture of a family and community in the decades leading up to the Second World War and a coming-of-age story as David struggles to escape his village and become a writer. Yet, he is held back and ultimately – though it is full of colourful characters and deep familial love – The Mountain and the Valley is a tragedy. The final visual image created by director Guillermo Verdecchia is magnificent and intensely moving.
At the play’s heart is the family unit with Mary Fay Coady and Ryan Rogerson warmly and richly anchoring the mother, Martha, and father, Joseph, as strong individuals who are part of a loving though sometimes fractious couple. Burgandy Code is, as usual, excellent as the grandmother, Ellen, whose hooked rugs tell the history of the family.
David is also strongly connected to his lively, strong twin sister Anna (Ailsa Galbreath) and his robust and playful Halifax penpal and friend Toby (Hugh Ritchie), both of whom escape to the big city of Halifax. So much of David is interior and psychological and not carried in spoken language but Sam Vigneault draws out the character’s moodiness, love, anger and remorse.
Toronto director Verdecchia, who also served as dramaturge, has a great cast of 13 animating the community: Chris O’Neill as the harsh and judgmental Rachel, sometimes a comic character; Kih Becke in a finely-tuned emotional performance as Bess, the beautiful, strong woman who fascinates the men and inspires a biblical jealousy in the women; Seb Reade as Bess’s delightful and innocent daughter Effie; Omar Alex Khan as the farmer Ben. Henricus Gielis is David’s playful friend Steve, Alex Furber is David’s brother Chris and Becca Guilderson is Charlotte, Rachel’s daughter and girlfriend to Chris.
The play is also animated by a minimal use of music and a spoken word chorus, directed by musical director Allen Cole.
The first act moves along at a good clip with a powerful, emotional climax; the second act, as written in Buckler’s novel, lacks the same propulsion. It’s all building up to David’s great mountain-top moment of self-realization.
It took Catherine Banks, a two-time Governor General’s award-winner, 14 years to craft this story and to get it to the stage after receiving the rights to the work from Buckler’s great-niece Joyce Rice. Her script is a very faithful and rich adaptation that breathes life into Buckler’s people. Buckler’s visual poetry in his writing about the land is more present in the book but since the audience is right in the land it absorbs the characters’ love for it.
Banks writes in the program notes that she sees the play as more than a portrait of a farming family: “…. as I worked with the characters, I came to believe that Buckler was telling a deeper story. That he posed the question, how is it that a brilliant boy, beloved by family and community, becomes an outcast, alone, an Old Man Hennessey?”
Banks, who grew up in the Annapolis Valley, also wanted to reflect the more diverse population she knew from her childhood than what is present in Buckler’s work and added in diverse characters which introduces an unspoken element of racism to the extreme fear and dislike of Bess.
Especially given all the sexual politics lately, the boys’ energetic ribald teenage talk about sex is – from a woman’s perspective – discomforting at times. The very few sex scenes are done in elegant dance-like choreography, by intimacy coordinator Samantha Wilson, as a delicate impression not a vivid expression.
The Mountain and the Valley is staged simply and effectively with a very imaginative use of the kitchen chairs which become grave stones, a car and other objects and a few props, many of which indicate activity in the kitchen, which is Martha’s domain. There are real bean crocks and imaginary giant boulders; a real yoke and two actors amusingly playing the two oxen in a key scene when David confronts his father.
Designer Diego Cavedon Dias’ costumes are a wide range from convincing farm and city attire to high-necked Victorian/Edwardian blouses and long skirts for Rachel and Martha that don’t change as the years do. The use of a sailor suit motif for Anna as a child and as an adult works really well.
Also on the creative team are: movement director Kih Becke, stage manager Robin Munro, apprentice stage manager Laurie Fleet, technical director John Thomson, production assistant Emma Lamont and puppetry consultant Jim Morrow.
WHEN YOU GO:
The Mountain and the Valley runs Wednesdays and Fridays at 6 p.m., Saturdays at 4 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. to August 11. On at the same time is a new fireside musical, Chased by the Bear, by Allen Cole and Ken Schwartz, as adapted from Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, running Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. to August 10.
Both shows can be seen on Saturdays and this Saturday has a great sunny forecast. (It seems the rainy weekend curse of early summer has been broken.) Tickets are at https://artscentre.ca/two-planks/buy-tickets/ ; Eastern Front Theatre is offering a bus ride with a picnic “and more!” on July 28; go to www.easternfronttheatre.com/field-trips.
shalan joudry’s KOQM runs from August 13 to 17, Tuesday to Friday, 6 p.m., and Saturday, 2 and 6 p.m. This journey through time and land to experience the voices of fictional L’nu (Mi’kmaw) women was first staged at Neptune Theatre in 2022 and was very good. I can only image the outdoor setting will make it that much richer and deeper.
The nsreviews.blog review of KOQM is at KOQM: powerful stories of L’nu Mi’kmaw women at Neptune Theatre – NS reviews )
ERNEST BUCKLER BIO:
Buckler was born in West Dalhousie on the South Mountain in 1908 and is describing the community he knew. He left to study mathematics and philosophy for his 1929 B.A. from Dalhousie University and 1930 M.A. from the University of Toronto. After working as an actuary at the Manufacturers’ Life Insurance Company in Toronto for six years, he fell ill and returned to the Annapolis Valley to write and farm, at first on his father’s property and later on his own farm in Centrelea near Bridgetown on the South Mountain side of the road to Annapolis. He died in 1984 in Bridgetown. His works include: The Cruelest Month (1963); Ox Bells and Fireflies (1968) and Nova Scotia: Window on the Sea (1973).
He once wrote of himself, “About the only contact I have with the outside world is through my mailbox and a travelling Bookmobile; and an author’s problems get scant sympathy in the country. Writing is regarded as at most a harmless eccentricity, like an abnormal appetite for marsh greens.” (Nova Scotia Archives – Ernest Buckler: A Remarkable Nova Scotia Novelist)
The above site also has a wonderful photo of Buckler at his typewriter. Much of the archival material is still under copyright.
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Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: catherine-banks, ernest-buckler, events, nova-scotia, the-annapolis-valley, the-mountain-and-the-valley, theatre, travel, two-planks-and-a-passion-theatre
NS reviews 
Great Review. There’s a discrepancy between the closing day date on the TPAP website and your review. August 10 vs 11.
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Hi Linda. Thanks for pointing this out and thanks for reading. The Mountain and the Valley does run to Aug. 11; final show is Aug. 11, 2 p.m. Chased by the Bear’s final show is Aug. 10. SO I got it mixed up! Thanks again.
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