15th Canadian Challenge - 2nd Review - The Postmistress

I've been on a bit of a Tomson Highway kick for a while now, kicked off by finally watching The Rez Sisters over in Stratford.  I'll cover The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips in a separate joint review, and then Rose when I am finished reading it.  Interestingly, both Rose and The (Post) Mistress are basically musicals, but The (Post) Mistress is radically slimmed down.  Rose requires 17 actors, while The (Post) Mistress calls for one actor/singer, a pianist and a saxophone player.  While I find Highway's busy, chaotic plays set on the Rez interesting, I think he is getting much more strategic about writing material with a better chance of actually getting staged.

While there are some Cree (and French) songs, Highway specifies that there should be surtitle translations to assist the audience.  Also, he has written the role of Marie-Louise Painchaud (the post-mistress) as a Francophone with a smidgen of First Nations ancestry (to sidestep the controversy of whether non-Native actors should perform Native parts).  As far as I can tell, Patricia Cano, a Peruvian-Canadian, has been the only actor to actually take on this role, and Highway himself usually plays the piano!  This has played in various places in Ontario: Ottawa, Sudbury, Peterborough and finally Toronto in 2016.  I'm trying to remember whether I missed it or just decided not to go, as musicals are generally not my bag.  Or I may just not have been that interested in the nosy post-mistress going on about the love lives of her customers, and that is pretty much at the heart of all the letters.  The post-mistress has such a connection with the mail that apparently she can read out all the unopened letters.  The piece seems drenched in small town invasiveness that so appalls me.  In a lot of ways this is in the same vein as Spoon River Anthology, though not quite as bitter.

While I won't spoil the final twist, it really turned me off as it led the play/musical in some weird metaphysical direction I didn't like at all.  I'm actually fairly glad that I didn't see this, as I just don't think I would have enjoyed it.  I'd be much more interested in a revival of Rose or seeing if Highway actually writes the next chapter of life on the Rez, so I'll keep my eyes open for that.