Young Goldie Garratt shines in her father's 'Saving Graceland' at the Blyth Festival
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
It has been 10 years on the calendar since Blyth Festival Artistic Director Gil Garratt put the stories in his head onto the Memorial Hall stage. He wasn’t even the head honcho for that season, Marion de Vries was.
Garratt took the reins the next year after the successful production of St. Anne’s Reel in the 2014 season. Since then, Garratt has been part of the company that created collectives like Wing Night at The Boot and The Pigeon King and co-written stories torn from the headlines or the history books like The Last Donnelly Standing with Paul Thompson or In the Wake of Wettlaufer with Kelly McIntosh, but, until last weekend, St. Anne’s Reel stood as his lone solo main stage writing credit at the Festival. (He did pen Wireless for the Festival’s Young Company in 2007.)
That is until the curtain went up on Saving Graceland last Friday night. No doubt there were numerous reasons for it to be an emotional night for Garratt - a 50th anniversary season for a beloved Festival, another opening night as the clouds of the pandemic lift, a 10th season at the helm in Blyth - but to see his young daughter Goldie tread the same boards he has so many times before must have been a proud moment.
In Saving Graceland, Garratt attempts to tackle two issues of increasing urgency in this country, and especially in rural Ontario: the opioid crisis and the rise of kincare as children are left, for one reason or another, to be raised by grandparents, uncles and aunts or other members of their more extended families.
It’s an attempt to engage in the lineage of the very best work that the Festival has done over the years, holding a mirror up to the community and reflecting its members’ stories back at them. Some of those stories have come after decades of space, like Beverley Cooper’s Innocence Lost: A Play About Steven Truscott or The Outdoor Donnellys by Paul Thompson, Janet Amos and others, while others have picked at a fresh wound without nearly as much hindsight, like the aforementioned In the Wake of Wettlaufer, The Pigeon King or Ipperwash.
It’s a valiant attempt to put on stage a situation that is affecting so many families these days. And while its dramatic heft will no doubt make it a tough sit for some, others will surely appreciate seeing a version of their own struggle portrayed for them. Whether it’s the parent whose child has struggled with substance abuse or the grandparent who’s seen their grandchild turned away by a parent, there is a lot to identify with in the story Garratt is telling.
Levity in the story comes - as it always does, though notably not for the fans of Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla - from Elvis Presley. J.D Nicholsen’s Gord is obsessed with Elvis and has been for the better part of his life. His wife, Orillia, played by Caroline Gillis, likes Elvis just fine, thank you very much, but is more of an ally to Gord for his obsession than she is a full-blown fan herself.
The Elvis aspect of the story - regardless of your personal feelings about The King - provides some genuinely moving moments, however, as Gord’s enthusiasm as a rabid Elvis fan and burgeoning Elvis tribute artist can be infectious.
The story begins with Gord and Orillia about to leave for their inconvenient, yet cheap, middle-of-the-night flight to Hawaii when their granddaughter, Dylan, played by Garratt’s daughter Goldie, presents herself, alone, at their door.
It quickly becomes abundantly clear that Dylan’s mother is fighting debilitating drug addiction and has jettisoned her daughter in favour of a bender. How long the bender will last, however, is anyone’s guess.
Dylan’s mother Lauren, played by Amy Keating, does eventually return, but only after Gord and Orillia begin to come to terms with the fact that they may have to return to the world of parenting - emotionally, practically and financially.
Gillis embodies an older Huron County woman searching for direction in the later stages of her life, while Keating presents her take on a heavily conflicted parent to Dylan and area native Cam Laurie brings us a bridge from Lauren to her parents. As Ben, he’s both a long-time friend of Lauren’s but the man who Gord has treated like a son for years, down to selling him his auto shop upon retiring.
The play’s best scenes are between Nicholsen and Goldie; their relationship is genuine and casual (no doubt helped by their real-life relationship - Gil and Goldie’s “Uncle Jack” have been collaborators and friends since before Goldie was born). As a child who’s new to the professional stage, Goldie isn’t overloaded with lengthy monologues or chatty exchanges, but she steals the show when it’s her time to shine.
Furthermore - and perhaps this is a relatively new father speaking - the presence of a real-life child on the stage adds an emotional heft to scenes of conflict among the adults. While it’s easy to get wrapped up in the emotionality of the day-to-day doings of a complicated custody situation, remembering that a living, breathing, growing person hangs in the balance can become back-burner stuff, but Gil and director James MacDonald work to ensure Dylan is always part of the conversation.
Saving Graceland tells the story of a very specific fractured family, so it may not be for everyone, but, as a family drama to which many can relate, it’s quite possible that the story could be seen as being universal in its specificity.
Saving Graceland is on the Memorial Hall stage until Saturday, Aug. 3.