There was a little irony in the crisp fall air as I followed the cane and walker crowd into the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall: someone was playing Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean on a ghetto blaster that rang out over the Loyola campus. Till We Meet Again is a reproduction of CBC radio broadcasts during World War Two. The cast sings its way through three broadcasts and that is the plot.
The dialogue is taken directly from letters and recordings of the time. The dialogue letters and interviews were not very theatrical. They may have had a huge impact in the middle of a war in a more innocent era, but today they are dull. However, there is a real audience for this show and I was reminded of how important these songs were to the generation of English speakers who sang them. The audience was singing along and responding with heartfelt applause.
The play will follow up a short run here, which ended yesterday, with a 36-performance tour including stops in Mississauga, Ottawa, Markham and Oakville, before returning to Montreal on November 21st for two performances. It was about the nostalgia for an era when conserving wrapping paper made people feel as though they were really making a contribution to victory. For some of the audience there was a Montreal where not one word of French gets spoken, and oddly the French are hardly mentioned in the news of the day. This is a play for a really Anglo audience. One that it will surely find.
I think there is sweetness in Heather Markgraf Lowe which she brings to her direction of this play, although a good dramaturge would have cut some of the longer letters and the interviews with the strangely wooden soldier. In contrast to Dan Jeannotte’s rather monotone delivery is the talented Jane Hackett who also rocked in Slow Dance with a Hot Pick Up this year. Amanda LeBlanc was delightful as Maxine Martine. Stephanie McNamara was a fabulous Alice Thompson and Marian Saminski did a terrific job as musical director, and played a convincing Dixie Coleman. Michael Daniel Murphy was good as Ron Houseman but had to play next to the inimitable Pierre Lenoir as the Lead: a consummate professional. He knows how to deliver song or a line and how to take a joke to the brink of a milking it then pulling back with panache.
David Langlois wrote two very different plays, and did not really pull them together. The music, which is listed menu fashion in the program, tells one story; the dialogue, something completely different. Fortunately most of the audience is so swept into the fog of sentiment evoked by the really beautifully delivered songs that the cast could just as well be reciting the phone book.
Till We Meet Again will be back at Oscar Peterson Concert Hall on Concordia University’s Loyola Campus, 7141 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest, for two performances, Nov. 21-22. For more details and a video on the play, check the website. Tickets available at the box office and from Admission – 514 790-1245.
