Ectoplasm!
World Premiere of The Elmwood Visitation promises entertainment, provides excuse to use the word ectoplasm
EVAN JOHNSON STAFF
“There’s an S&M component, as in all the work that I do,” said director George Toles, of the forthcoming Theatre Projects Manitoba “world première” presentation of local playwright Carolyn Gray’s The Elmwood Visitation. The play concerns an odd chapter in Winnipeg’s history in which Scottish author Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of both Sherlock Holmes and the cantankerous, megacephalic Professor Challenger) travelled to our venerably isolated city as part of his interest in spiritualism.
“I was intrigued,” said Toles, “by the idea that good Sir Arthur, inventor of the world’s most rationalist detective, fell hook, line and sinker for spiritualism and psychic phenomena, in part because he lost his son in the First World War and could not reconcile himself to the belief that no further contact was ever going to be possible.”
Doyle’s visit was, more specifically, to the home of physician/spirit-photographer/MLA Thomas Glendenning Hamilton, and the play concerns this visit and the assorted antics, including various séances and a Houdini-style escape routine, that ensue. Hamilton’s home was in the neighborhood of Elmwood; hence the title, and hence we don’t have to watch a play called The Inkster West Visitation.
“I like the fact that he was drawn to Winnipeg by the prospect of meeting a man who was determined to give an absolutely scientific basis to the spiritualist movement,” said Toles, “but that he was completely hornswaggled by every psychic fraud that came along. His Holmesian acumen seemed to desert him whenever spiritualism came up.”
Even if you actively dislike theatre, or are so apathetic that you didn’t even realize it was still considered a legitimate form of entertainment, Toles insists the play has numerous selling points. “First — sexy séances. Imagine the potential abuses of trust in the dark as ectoplasm is flying and voices of various kinds are coming through,” pleaded Toles.
“If you hate theatre and séances, you might still like Houdini death-defying exploits. Plus, the play is only 90 minutes long! So it’s entirely conceivable that for the first time, theatre-goers will leave a play wanting more. An hour and a half: it’s close to that perfect 83-minute movie length that everyone has forgotten about.”
And if you’re not interested in séances, death-defying escapes, brevity, Winnipeg history, or Conan Doyle, then you can at least revel in the gobs of local talent, says Toles, both cast and writer. “Carolyn Gray is a good friend and a fine writer. She likes rapid shifts in tone, she likes every scene to have as many little surprises as possible, to set viewers off course, not to give them what they think they know or what they think they want.”
“And we have a zinger Winnipeg cast,” said Toles, a cast which includes Graham Ashmore, Monique Marcker, Miriam Smith and Gordon Tanner, with Harry Nelken as Conan Doyle.
“I believe, and maybe it’s psychic influences, but when Harry Nelken is on stage, or just talking to me over coffee, I believe that he is Arthur Conan Doyle,” insisted Toles. “Nothing anyone says to me from this time forward will shake my firm belief that he’s the man himself. I know I sound like I’m jesting here but I’m not. I’ve actually ripped pictures of the real Conan Doyle out of books and put Harry Nelken photos in their place.”
The Elmwood Visitatio. runs Feb. 16 through 25 at the WCD studio, 211 Bannatyne.
