Canadian writer Farley Mowat always defended his right to embellish the facts in service of greater truths. Those who know him in 2026 are most likely to be familiar with the novel Owls in the Family or the controversial Never Cry Wolf. In gentle and fierce shapes, these are quintessentially Canadian — and archetypally embellished — works. But in 1979, he published And No Birds Sang, a searing memoir of his service in Sicily and Italy during the Second World War. He wrote it in Port Hope. And now, in Dave Carley’s world-premiere adaptation at the Capitol Theatre, it comes home.
This war story of a sensitive soul in the Second World War checks familiar boxes that make it feel true: the demanding father who hopes combat will forge his son into a man; the girlfriend left behind; the larger-than-life soldier buddy; the endless waiting and naive longing for action; anbd the actual combat, which is by turns anticlimactic, chaotic, terrifying, absurd and tragic. Director Rob Kempson and his stellar three-person cast don’t sidestep these conventions: they drive straight through them towards a reckoning that is rooted in Mowat’s memories and vivid prose.
Ultimately, this is a play about paradoxes. The abject terror and the energizing camaraderie which, somehow, are the one and the same. An experience that is “mostly shit,” yet somehow also “the most noble thing I’ve done”—and whose end Mowat mourns. The fear young Farley calls “the worm,” which gnaws at his gut through training and battle, suffusing him with a dread that he won’t do the right thing in the moment. He tries to whistle past it: not naming it, staying “shallow”, and not looking to see who he shot. Until he can’t any more, because, as Mowat’s shrapnel-like prose puts it, “The line between heroic slaughter and brutal murder flickers and wavers… and becomes invisible.”
Kempson’s staging is another kind of paradox: intimate constraint that unlocks theatrical imagination. The actors occupy a tight space anchored by a piano that they circle, hide behind, and drape themselves across. They don hats and jackets to shift their characters. They cradle and cock a guitar, a violin, and a pickin’ stick like weapons … playing dissonant bursts that stand in for gunfire, atonal screeching that ratchets up the tension, and musical riffs that provide emotional underscoring and atmosphere outside the physical reality of the characters.
I am so conditioned to musicals that I kept expecting the catchy guitar riffs to lead the cast to break into song. But the reality is more interesting. Jeff Newberry’s sound design and Jeff Pybus’s perfectly synched lighting, married to the Foley sound and music created by the cast, conjure explosions, transitions and spotlights — and all of it transforms the Sculthorpe Theatre into a shamanic summoning of Mowat’s memories.
Aaron MacPherson is a hauntingly young “Peachface” Mowat: clear-eyed, direct, and already haunted. Daniel Reale is a shape-shifter, most memorable as the wild-eyed Jack Kelly, forever pulling Farley under his wing. Mayson Sonntag moves seamlessly between the girlfriend left behind and the whip smart Doc, the officers’ enlisted “batman” (not a superhero: a servant and bodyguard for the two commissioned officers).
The three function like a well-oiled theatrical unit, enlisting our imaginations and advancing us systematically through the story. In the process, And No Birds Sang squares up major questions confronted by soldiers in the crucible of war. Will you rise to the moment? Can you remain yourself, or will you cross a line? What — and who — will be the price you pay?
One note on the venue: the Sculthorpe’s cabaret-style seating packs floor chairs around small tables, and at the back, tall chairs around tall tables. Especially when the house is full, the space is cramped, and can be hard on the back and legs. Perhaps the discomfort suits the subject matter, but thinning out the tables might allow for seating that feels a little less … military.
But that’s a quibble. At this time when we Canadians find ourselves suddenly and urgently defending what we thought was settled — our freedom, our sovereignty, and our sense of who we are — no one should miss this intense, inventive and quintessentially Canadian story about the cost of rising to a moment.
And No Birds Sang plays at the Capitol Theatre in Port Hope through September 6, 2026. Tickets are available at capitoltheatre.com or 905-885-1071.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
