Wally, by Greg Kramer
Riverbank Press, 339 pages, $22.95, softcover.
Wally opens with a storm that "pummels the Lower Mainland into submission", knocking out power and sending virtually everyone indoors. Into this maelstrom Montreal actor and author Greg Kramer sends his protagonist, Wally Greene, a 50ish props builder for the Phoenix Theatre, "careening out of the house and down the garden path, the front door slammed on the back end of a domestic squabble, with nothing more than a flimsy coat and a curse to ward off the rain". Evocative of the mad King Lear, the first page sets the stage perfectly for a novel that adopts the theatre as its primary setting.
Readers eventually learn that Wally is, indeed, as mad as Lear in this occasionally spellbinding, often surprising, and always excellent novel, Kramer's third. Wally's temper causes his fists to be bloodied a few times in his life. He also obsesses over a time from his childhood in Wales when three London children stayed with his family during the Blitz. The resentment he felt at being treated as less worthy by these children of privilege has shaped much of his life.
The novel, divided theatrically into five acts, is set in 1987 Vancouver with flashbacks, mainly told from Wally's perspective. Kramer occasionally gives the reins of the story to Wally's son, Alexander, a gay teen who should be practising piano for his upcoming Juilliard audition but is more interested in sexual and narcotics experimentation. The argument on the first page was over Xander's desire to get his ear pierced, but before long he is having a nipple pierced and shaving half of his head.
The main strength of this novel is the verisimilitude of the theatre world it depicts, from the first play Wally sees at six years old (which moves him to dance a "furious, red-faced jig in the aisle"), through the raucous and rowdy London theatre scene of the 1950s and '60s, and on to post-Expo Vancouver. The only weakness, apart from the unfortunate title and cover design, is that the Alexander story line fizzles out somewhat. Wally's story, however, does anything but fizzle--it explodes.
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