Hirsch goes for broad strokes and details

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      By Alon Nashman and Paul Thompson. Directed by Paul Thompson. Presented by the Chutzpah Festival, the Firehall Arts Centre, and Touchstone Theatre. At the Firehall Arts Centre on Wednesday, February 26. Continues until March 1

      Theatre director John Hirsch (1930-1989) was a gay, Hungarian, Jewish survivor of the Holocaust who redefined theatre in Canada. You’d think you could get some juice out of his life story. But, for the most part, Hirsch is brittle.

      Because it doesn’t explore significant relationships, the script gives us broad strokes and details, but little depth. Solo actor Alon Nashman, who cowrote the script with his director, Paul Thompson, tells us that Hirsch’s mother loved to laugh. And we see her laughing, but her jaunty pose is emblematic rather than human, an idea as opposed to a detail in a more fully fleshed portrait. Several times, Hirsch refers to his brother, István, but we don’t meet him. Consequently, when these two perish in the Holocaust—Hirsch was the only person in his immediate family to survive—the artist’s grief is abstract.

      Similarly, we hear a letter that Hirsch wrote to someone called Brian. It’s easy to figure out that Brian was his long-time lover, but what was their relationship like? The script provides crumbs of information that indicate nonmonogamy and hint at kinkiness, but the remaining blank is huge. And how did it feel to be in perpetual flight from memories of the Holocaust and then be felled by AIDS? The script refers to this double curse, but the storytelling remains impersonal, editorial rather than intimate.

      Nashman’s fervently presentational performance style provides a further barrier. His Hirsch is all wild eyes and flamboyance but reveals little of the inner man.

      All of this said, some passages in Hirsch work. In the best bit, Hirsch tears a strip off a young actor—Nashman, as it turns out—who is rehearsing the role of Caliban in The Tempest. (Hirsch helmed the Stratford Festival in two separate terms.) The young Nashman, who doesn’t know all his lines, defends himself by saying that memorization comes later in his process. Hirsch points out that the Stratford Festival is paying Len Cariou a great deal of money while Nashman indulges himself. For once, a dynamic, two-character scene shows us how Hirsch actually worked.

      Other moments succeed thanks to a combination of storytelling and staging. In the re-creation of a scene from Hirsch’s interpretation of The Dybbuk, it’s as if ghosts from Hirsch’s Holocaust are screaming “Murderers!” through the mouth of a possessed young bride, as the chuppah, the Jewish wedding canopy, descends on her in Gillian Gallow’s set.

      A champion of Canadian culture—he cofounded the Manitoba Theatre Centre, and was the head of television drama at the CBC—Hirsch demanded excellence. His memory is well served by moments here, but not by the whole.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Deb Pickman

      Mar 2, 2014 at 1:14pm

      This production was everything I wanted and both my theatre grinch husband and myself were spellbound as the actor morphed into each character. Amoung the most satisfying experiences I've had in the theatre in recent years. Love the Firehall's idea to collect Hirsh stories from people on thier blog. How fortunate Canada is to have had this talented & passionate man emigrate here.