Reviews of Balconville


The following are reviews of different productions of Balconville:

The London Production

Dave's a Marxist and Thereby Hangs a Tale

Evening Chronicle
March 17, 1981

STILL SLIGHTLY PUNCHY after his transatlantic flight and only slowly acclimatizing himself to the British accent (and it is definitely not an advantage to sport one in Canada these days), David Fennario was bemused by the warnings attached to his posters for his play.

"Haven't had that since Vancouver," he said in his unexpectedly quiet voice. He was referring to the warnings about the language in his play, Balconville, which opens at Bath Theatre Royal tomorrow and runs to the weekend. His own conversation is not without expletives.


He's 32 and the son of a Liverpool house painter who emigrated to Canada as did his mother who was born in Kilmarnock. He is a Marxist and talks about the struggle and unification of the working class.


But don't let that fool you into thinking that Balconville is a heavy handed political tract. It was Canada's most successful play in 1979 - a huge hit seen by over 100,000 people.


"I'm not an academic Marxist writing plays for the working class," explained David. "Basically I am a showman and I am a Marxist. If I were not a Marxist I would still be a showman. I like to tell people a story, to entertain people."


He's not interested in avant-garde, abstract, existentialist theatre. Balconville is about families, the stormy and funny relationships between two English households and one French in Montréal.


It it David's third hit play. But it is more by accident than design that he ended up as Canada's leading playwright.


He left school at 18 to work in a warehouse. It was only when he got laid off that he decided to go back to school. A teacher showed some of his work to Maurice Podbrey, Artistic Director of the Centaur Theatre in Montréal - and he was so impressed he invited David to become Centaur's first resident playwright.


Resident is, he said, a misnomer. He was given a grant which was not vast. So he became a kept man for six years and his girlfriend Liz Johansen turned to waitressing - now he's returning the compliment and Liz has gone to art school.


At that point the only play David had seen was Gorki's Lower Depths which had not made much of an impression either way.


He watched two seasons of plays - 24 in all - being put together by the company from scratch. Then he wrote On The Job which, I hasten to add has no sexual connotations in Canada.


It was a hit, as was his second play, Nothing to Lose. Then came Balconville and now he is working on a book, which like his plays draws on his personal experiences. He's also recently finished a script for a commercial movie, due to be made next year.


Still, I doubted he had made much of a killing by writing. Oh yes he had, he said. Though he has no plans to pull up his working class roots.


And he sticks by his beliefs. He picketed, to the chagrin of Centaur, his own play when it visited a theatre where the usherettes and box office staff were on strike. He has also given the 5000 dollar prize he won for Balconville to the Cultural Workers Alliance.


But I suspect what pleases him most is the fact that he has brought new audiences into the theatre - people who had never before bought a ticket.

 

The London Production

Drama in a long hot summer

by Jo Jo Bayne
Western Daily Express (Bath)
March 19, 1981

A MODEST GRASP of French might help one's detailed understanding of David Fennario's bilingual play, but lack of linguistic skills is no serious barrier to enjoyment.

This is the British premier of a production which won Canada's top drama award in 1979.

The lifestyle it depicts is in many ways peculiar to the poor tenement areas of Montréal, but the inferences are universal.

During a hot summer, the heat, boredom and frustration of unemployment increases the personal and political divisions between the English and French sections of the community.

And there is speculation as to whether a spate of fires is the work of hooligans, or landlords after the insurance money, or the French separatists. Suspicion and tension grows.

There is a particularly engaging performance by Yolande Circé as the gentle French mother, who turns her back on the daily struggle to tend her plants on the balcony, feed the birds, and go to church.

The language is often uncomfortable, but it is appropriate.

It is a racy, thought-provoking work which could be set for a long run when it reaches London.

Performances continue until Saturday, beginning at 7:45 and ending at about 10p.m.

 

The Belfast Production

Balconville- We've Been There Before

by Carmel McQuaid
Sunday News (Belfast), March 29, 1981

"BALCONVILLE," WHICH THE Canadian Centaur Theatre troupe staged at the Grand Opera House last week, proved a huge disappointment. Very much in the American mould, with whimsy relationships between mother and son, many of the lines were in French and therefore incomprehensible to the non linguistic.

And the repetition of a single obscene adjective became quite monotonous, through it may well have proved shocking to more protected Canadian ears.

The play itself showed two divided communities in Montréal but we in Northern Ireland have already seen umpteen dramas about mutually incompatible communities- compared to which this was very mild beer indeed. It had nothing of the power and poignancy of West Side Story.

But the drama did communicate how irksome daily life in the slums was, and it also captured the community support and frictions. There was a very good scene where a husband returns home, broken because he's lost a job, and the ending proved really dramatic, with as fine a stage fire as I've seen.

But all in all certainly not a show to get excited about.

 

The Belfast Production

A hit from Canada

by Martin O'Brien

THE SMASH-HIT Canadian play Balconville which opened for a week in the Grand Opera House, Belfast, last night, entirely lived up to its growing reputation as a potentially classic study, not just of the French-English conflict in Canada, but also of the trials of working-class people in a depressed area.
For this production by the English-speaking Centaur Theatre Company of Montréal was extremely compelling drama from beginning to end and thoroughly entertaining.

"Balconville" is the name given to the tenement area of Montréal and David Fennario's play is the story of three working-class families- one French speaking and the others English-speaking- who live alongside each other in the tenements of the depressed Pointe St. Charles district.

The action takes place during a summer that is very hot in more than a climactic sense. The air is thick with tension and sulfur. Arson attacks are rife, unemployement is spiralling, and an election is in the offing.

The scene is set for all the smouldering embers of the conflict not just between French and English Canadian, but between employed and unemployed man; between husband and wife; between mother and son- or as Fennario might say, simply between alienated homo sapiens- to flare up and destroy the illusion of normality nurtured by Diane Paquette as she assiduously waters her plants on her tenement balcony.

A relatively small part of the dialogue is in French, but you don't have to be a French speaker to follow what is going on throughout this very slick production by Guy Sprung. As a colleague remarked to me afterwards, the bursts of French add flavour and greater atmosphere to the setting.

Apart from the splendid acting- and it would be invidious to single anyone out for praise- and the play's continuous appeal, I was especially struck by the set which was easily the best I've seen at the Opera House since it reopened and among the best I'm ever likely to see.

Fennario is a Marxist and his play is as forceful a denunciation of capitalist society as one would expect from a convinced Marxist. The play is very witty, is apparently comprehensive in its examination of Montréal's slums and is extremely relevant in divided Belfast, particularly at a time of recession.

"Balconville" is obviously a major contribution to contemporary world drama and we're privileged to have it in Belfast before it moves to the Old Vic.