On Stage
What: Billy Bishop Goes to War
Where: Roxy Theatre, 2657 Quadra St.
When: Oct. 25 through Nov. 4
Tickets: $20-$47 at bluebridgetheatre.ca, by phone at 250-382-3370, or in person at the Roxy Theatre
When John Gray and Eric Peterson’s Billy Bishop Goes to War premièred in Vancouver in 1978, it achieved unprecedented success for a homegrown production.
By some accounts, the play, based on the life of the most decorated Canadian fighter pilot of the First World War, is considered Canada’s greatest theatrical triumph.
Four decades later, the two-person performance, which opens tonight at the Roxy Theatre in a production by Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre, remains in huge demand.
Various iterations of Billy Bishop have been staged on and off Broadway, in addition to runs at the Edinburgh Festival and in London’s West End, among other locations. The comedic mini-musical has been translated into several languages, including French, Danish and German.
Jacob Richmond, who is directing the Blue Bridge production, has seen several Billy Bishop revivals over the years, and each time was struck by the story’s unnerving power.
Bishop, who shot down 72 planes during battle, and went on to train British airmen in Canada during the Second World War, is a fascinating character, a small-town boy from Owen Sound, Ont., who became an unlikely hero.
“No one was really expecting much out of him,” Richmond said of Bishop, who is played by R.J. Peters in the upcoming production. “He’s just as surprised by his gift as anybody else is.”
Stage veteran Peters (seen in last year’s Blue Bridge hit Swan Song and Other Farces) is joined by pianist and singer Gabriel MacDonald, who was introduced to Blue Bridge audiences in July in Sweeney Todd. The two-person performance is spare, but Richmond believes Gray’s writing is a commanding presence.
“Sometimes you forget that you’re listening to a guy telling you about what it’s like to be in a dogfight with old, rickety planes. Sometimes you lose yourself by him narrating, which is rare.”
Peters, who plays 18 roles in the performance, does much of the heavy lifting — “It’s an intense amount of memorizing,” Richmond said — a feat that would bog down the performance in lesser hands. The actor won raves in the role of Groucho Marx in Blue Bridge’s Animal Crackers two years ago, and Richmond believes Peters’ version of Bishop is immensely likable.
“He’s not an overly patriotic, jingoistic preacher — he just stumbles into things. That adds to its universal appeal.”
Though it’s often billed as a comedy, elements of the play deal with war in frank terms.
“The piece rides the balance of not glorifying war,” Richmond said. “It does sink in at one point that World War I was a massacre on many fronts, especially for Canadians.
“We’re very conscious of not making it a celebration, and being respectful of how many people lost their lives.”
There’s no downplaying the Canadiana of Gray’s original. Bishop, whose likeness has been on a Canadian stamp, is regarded as one of the greatest Canadians. Richmond said it’s interesting that the quintessentially Canadian play has had such a life in the U.S.
“It’s very specific, and while some Canadian authors try to bury the fact that they are in Canada, this one is full-on.”
Working with a modest budget, Blue Bridge producers gave Richmond licence to do it his way. His version won’t differ much from previous ones, though it does boast some production surprises.
“What the piece really lends itself to is being creative with things. Initially, there was talk of putting an airplane on stage, but [Peters] would have been trapped in that thing for two hours. He needs to be mobile for this. He’s like a boy at play who makes his own sound effects.”
