Conrad Coates as Richard Whyte and Celia Aloma as Rachel Whyte in Get That Hope.David Hou/Stratford Festival
- Title: Get That Hope
- Written by: Andrea Scott
- Director: André Sills
- Actors: Celia Aloma, Conrad Coates, Savion Roach, Kim Roberts and Jennifer Villaverde
- Company: Stratford Festival
- Venue: Studio Theatre
- City: Stratford, Ont.
- Year: Runs to Sept. 28, 2024
How overdue is the opening of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT?
Well, that Toronto transit line has been so delayed that a play, set amid the chaos its construction has caused in the Little Jamaica neighbourhood, has been able to go from the germ of an idea in 2018 to a Stratford Festival world premiere – and the Metrolinx 13-year-and-counting project’s completion date is still nowhere in sight.
Get that Hope, a new family drama by Andrea Scott, takes place in the apartment of the Whyte family in the lead-up to a Jamaica Independence Day celebration, interrupted by the rumbling of jackhammers, intermittent showers of plaster dust and power outages, all caused by Ontario’s most troubled transit project.
Perhaps a decade-plus of turmoil and traffic is what’s driven family patriarch Richard Whyte (Conrad Coates) to divorce from reality – occasionally staring out the window as if at visions and forgetting his plans from moment to moment.
Margaret (Kim Roberts), his wife, who is disabled from her factory work, is too busy with her own physical problems to pay too much notice to his meanderings.
As for Simeon (Savion Roach), Richard and Margaret’s son, his mind is elsewhere as he heads to the funeral of a woman who served alongside him in the Canadian Forces; indeed, he seems more emotionally disconnected and edgy than ever.
The only one seemingly keeping it totally together is daughter Rachel (Celia Aloma). She’s in her thirties and working multiple jobs, covering most of the rent in the Whyte household, while also secretly squirrelling away a down payment for a condo on the other side of town.
On the verge of independence from her family, Rachel ends up using Jamaican Independence Day as an opportunity to speak up for the first time – about her school-play-skipping father, her cold stepmother and her unemployed brother.
She airs these grievances and hears them countered over the course of this play which takes place from when the family gets up in the morning to an evening party full of ginger beer, rice and peas and – courtesy of Milicent (Jennifer Villaverde), the family’s Filipina neighbour and Margaret’s physiotherapist – chicken adobo.
In the play’s marketing and the program, it’s been noted that Scott’s inspiration for writing this play was Eugene O’Neill’s dark addiction-steeped family drama Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which also takes place in a single day and which she saw at Stratford in 2018; that three-plus hour production was so long that the bus that runs between Stratford and Toronto had its departure time extended to accommodate the runtime.
At just over an hour and a half with an intermission, Get That Hope gets its points across a lot quicker – the downside is it doesn’t have the time to go as deep or pack the same wallop.
Kim Roberts as Margaret Whyte gives the most enjoyable performance, getting, as she does, the best lines.David Hou/Stratford Festival
In exploring the cultural gap and different expectations between immigrants and their Canadian-raised code-switching children, Scott’s play fits more into the English-Canadian dramatic tradition that traces back to David French’s Leaving Home (1972).
As is often the case in such plays, the younger characters can seem like scolds – Rachel certainly does – while the older characters are politically incorrect but more charming.
Roberts gives the most enjoyable performance as Margaret, getting, as she does, the best lines, such as when she chastises her stepdaughter that “Sunscreen is just another way for white people to take fools’ money.” She’s touching too in a scene in which she offends Millicent with a racist remark – and then apologizes in her own way.
Designer Sarah Uwadiae’s detailed set is a delight to explore while waiting for the show to start – from the giant portraits of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Barack Obama down to the family pictures and boxes of Ting.
After a few clever meta-theatrical teases to start the show, André Sills, long-time Stratford actor and first-time Stratford director, puts the show into kitchen-sink mode. The occasional expressionistic uses of lighting by Steve Lucas and sound design by Maddie Bautista don’t always feel entirely integrated.
There are a couple of hiccups in the script, too, that could be ironed out in future productions – with one revelation feeling like it lands several times in a row.
While Scott burdens her characters with troubles and flaws, she doesn’t seem to want to be too unkind to them – and so her play likeably moves toward resolution and reconciliation and, indeed, hope. Just not for the completion of the Eglinton LRT.
Savion Roach plays Simeon Whyte, Richard and Margaret’s son, whose mind is elsewhere as he heads to the funeral of a woman who served alongside him in the Canadian Forces.David Hou/Stratford Festival