RIDGE IS CLEAR-EYED

This is an odd compliment I know, but, watching Ridge, I kept thinking, “This show is like a block of wood.” It’s so solid and complete: so dense in its ethics and intelligence, so wholly and naturally itself.

Written by Brendan McLeod, brought to fruition with the band The Fugitives, of which McLeod is a member, and directed by Julia Course, Ridge examines the WWI Battle of Vimy Ridge, in which 3,598 Canadian soldiers were killed and another 7,000 injured. A critique of “the exploitation of young lives”, as the publicity material puts it, Ridge deconstructs the myths of “the battle that made Canada.” For me, it also implicitly challenges the gender norms that, disproportionately, turn males into cannon fodder.

Structurally, the show consists of McLeod telling us about the struggles and discoveries of his research, The Fugitives performing songs they’ve adapted from those written by WWI soldiers, and McLeod and other members of the band reading excerpts from text written by soldiers in their diaries and reminiscences.

McLeod’s goal in his research is to come to an understanding of the experience of Vimy Ridge that makes it feel real.

Without resorting to sensationalism, Ridge has enormous impact, in its calling-out of the number of underage combatants funneled into the horror, for instance, and its chilling description of the treatment of a deserter. Ridge tracks the growing disillusionment of combatants, their resentment of their officers, and the bravery of the Canadians at Vimy Ridge who, according to this telling, were fighting primarily to save the lives of the men next to them.

At the beginning of the evening, some of the songs felt insubstantial to me relative to the heft of the text but, as the evening progressed, the spoken and the sung combined strengths — in one song’s moving refrain “I saw him. I saw him”, for instance.

Under the musical direction of Adrian Glynn, the arrangements are gorgeously textured: guitars, banjo, harmonica, vocals, and a violin that sounds so much like a human voice. The arrangements are also restrained. There are many moments when these artists could have gone for musical sentimentality or bombast, but they always turn away from that, which is clean and admirable.

Subtlety and restraint are also the hallmarks of Jonathan Kim’s lighting, which contributes enormously to the show’s contemplative mood.

I confess that I entered the theatre trepidatiously. I was born in 1952, not long after the end of WWII and it was obvious to me, as a kid, that, if there were another war, I might be drafted and that horrified me. Just because I was a boy, why would I be expected to murder other people or sacrifice my life?

In my life, I have never seen a piece of theatre that addresses the realities of war in a way that seems so clear-eyed to me. So I am deeply grateful to Ridge. There’s sorrow and anger in this show, but also beauty, relief, and genuine honour in its honesty.

RIDGE By Brendan McLeod and The Fugitives. Written by Brendan McLeod. Directed by Julia Course. Musical direction by Adrian Glynn. A Brendan McLeod and The Fugitives production presented by the Firehall Arts Centre, running at the Firehall Arts Centre until November 3. Tickets

PHOTO CREDIT: (Photo of Christopher Suen, Brendan McLeod, Adrian Glynn, and Carly Frey by Mike Savage.)