At Canadian Stage, we have seen the Public Enemy. It is us. Run.

Mid-way through the first half of a recent performance of Public Enemy at Canadian Stage, a sudden burst of light at the side of the stage drew my eyes . . .and those of every other audience member. 

An elderly gentleman had opened the door leading from the audience to the well-lit lobby beyond. The light streamed in as he hoofed it from the auditorium. 

He punctuated his precipitous exit with an emphatic slam of the theatre door.

This delicious moment was unexpected, deeply disruptive . . . and completely understandable.

 I imagined his interior monologue: What the %^&* is this? My head’s exploding. I’m outta here!” Through the closed door, I envisaged him flipping the bird at the now-closed door.  

The multi-award-winning Public Enemy by Olivier Choinière, first presented in 2015 in Montreal, depicts two fractious family dinners separated by a year. Canadian Stage’s season-opening production of the play is fresh and wickedly funny. It’s also unrelenting to the point of being almost – or, for at least one gentleman, entirely – unbearable. The sheer volume of often simultaneous speechifying will leave your ears literally ringing. 

The play brings together an opinionated head of the family, adult siblings with divergent lifestyles, politics and parenting styles, and child cousins separated by a few years. Add lots of wine and several lifetimes’ worth of resentment and recrimination, and you have all the combustible ingredients for an explosive family dinner. And this Public Enemy, translated and adapted for today’s Ontario audiences by Bobby Theodore, delivers the pyrotechnics.  

Canadian Stage Artistic Director Brendan Healy creates a unique theatrical experience with the stellar cast of actors. Rosemary Dunsmore is matriarch Elizabeth. Matthew Edison is her son Daniel, and Jonathan Goad is her other son James. Michelle Monteith is daughter Melissa, and Amy Rutherford is Suzie, who joins the second dinner party in an unexpected role. The cast is rounded out by the family’s third generation: Finley Burke as sullen Tyler, teenage son of James, and Maja Vujicic as the 11-year-old daughter of Melissa. 

The cast’s fully-realized performances modulate effortlessly, sometimes shockingly, from sly humour to cutting barbs to physical violence. Every current and polarized political view has a proponent somewhere within the family, and the wine ensures we get to hear it. Take your pick: anti-vaccination, anti-immigrant, anti-Kathleen Wynn, anti-Doug Ford, Anti-Trudeau, anti-authoritarian. 

The devilish challenge is that these characters are more than their politics. Bit by bit, what we learn about their actions, ideas and relationships complicates alignment with – or  dismissal of – their views. Continually off-balance, we are forced to revise and recalibrate our views based on the facets, flaws and contradictions incrementally revealed in the show’s endless conversation.

In the play’s first half, when that elderly gentleman just couldn’t take it and stormed out, there is a long stretch where two dinner table conversations are happening simultaneously. The cacophony makes it impossible to follow everything that’s being said. The audience has no choice but to listen hard, and pay attention to one of the two conversations. 

There’s a metaphor in there. It seems easy to pick a side . . . but objectively, it’s hard bloody work to ignore half or more of what’s really going on.

We have seen the Public Enemy. It is us. 

Either hang in and face it  . . . or get the hell out, slam the door, and don’t come back. 

Reserve tickets to Public Enemy on canadianstage.ca.

© Scott Sneddon, SesayArts Magazine, 2022

flipping the bird