Is Alice Munro’s old editor enthusiastic about the Belfry Theatre’s latest show?
You bet.
“If you haven’t been to a show like this, you’re about to meet a new art form,” Douglas Gibson said. “You’re in for a treat when you go to see the way it works at the Belfry.”
A legend in Canada’s publishing scene, 73-year-old Gibson is the retired publisher and president of McClelland & Stewart. He’s the man who famously encouraged Munro to stick with short stories — her preferred métier — rather than attempting novels, a form she found difficult.
Because of his long relationship with Munro as an editor going back to 1974, the Belfry’s artistic team consulted him for its new production of Alice Munro Stories.
The show, directed by Anita Rochon, is a theatrical retelling of two of Munro’s stories: Differently from the 1990 collection Friend of My Youth, and Save the Reaper from 1998’s The Love of a Good Woman.
Differently is a distinctly Victoria story (Munro once lived here), with references to Dallas Road, Clover Point and a thinly disguised Bengal Room. In the story, a woman recalls her younger days, when she and a friend, now deceased, not only had extra-marital affairs but briefly shared the same lover.
In Save the Reaper, a woman takes her grandchildren on a road trip in southern Ontario. A wrong turn leads them to what appears to be a dilapidated drug house filled with sinister people, one of them a naked man.
Gibson won’t be at tonight’s opening of Alice Munro Stories — he’s recovering from recent surgery. However, he has seen a previous theatrical adaptation of Munro’s work. Stories by Alice Munro: The Office and Dolly was staged in 2015 by San Francisco’s Word for Word company. When the production came to Toronto, Gibson hosted the post-show discussions.
“Audiences didn’t know what they were coming to see, and they were just amazed by it,” he said.
Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, Munro is one of the world’s most admired short-story writers. Somehow, Gibson said, transforming her fiction into playlets fully reveals how much humour is in her work.
As for those who view her as a “20th century Jane Austen” (as critic Northrup Frye once described her), Gibson believes some will be surprised at Munro’s sexual frankness in Differently. In that story, a woman recalls an amorous encounter with her lover in the bushes near Dallas Road.
“The line is: ‘Her hair was wild, her lips were bruised, her clothes were full of sand.’ Isn’t that great?” Gibson said.
Word for Word originally contacted the Belfry about bringing the Alice Munro show here. Belfry artistic director Michael Shamata was intrigued. But because Munro is a Canadian writer, he felt it was preferable for a Canadian company to stage such a production.
He and director Rochon travelled to San Francisco to meet JoAnne Winter and Susan Harloe, Word for Word’s artistic directors, and witness their work first-hand
Like the American company’s shows, the Belfry’s Stories by Alice Munro is a verbatim retelling of the tales. Rochon said Winter and Harloe advised her on such technical tricks as how to perform descriptive passages and how to break up text in a theatrical manner.
“I’ve tried to take what was most successful with their shows and adapt that for our own purposes,” said Rochon. “Their real lesson was have fun and be daring.”
In Victoria, five actors will perform the two stories — each of them about an hour long — using minimal set and props.
Rochon has taken liberties with Differently, opening it in a hospital setting (a man reads to his unconscious wife) that is not part of the original story.
Save the Reaper, meanwhile, makes use of bold lighting effects. “It’s really exciting — it’s somewhere between horror and noir. The story is so creepy, right?” Rochon said.
When Munro won the Nobel Prize in 2013, she sent her daughter to Stockholm to accept it, as she felt making the trip would be physically overwhelming. She no longer writes fiction. Although Munro does visit Victoria on occasion, she’s not expected to attend the Belfry’s production.
“Alice is spending most of her time in Clinton [Ontario] in Alice Munro country. And her daughters come along and spend as much time with her as they can,” Gibson said.
“She’s getting by. She’s frail and she’s about to turn 86.”
Rochon said the cast would welcome Munro’s presence, although it might make them nervous.
On the other hand, she believes the short-story writer’s words speak for themselves.
“It’s been quite challenging. If feels like we’re working hard to live up to what she created,” Rochon said.
“But I’ve been gifted with one of the world’s greatest living writers, so [the work] continually reveals its depth. It never feels like a challenge that’s not worth taking on, you know.”
achamberlain@timescolonist.com
What: Alice Munro Stories
Where: Belfry Theatre
When: To May 14
Tickets: $20 to $53 (250-385-6815 or tickets.belfry.bc.ca)