Father and child reunion

>> Playwright Jacob Richmond and his director dad Brian collaborate on Small Returns

by AMY BARRATT

“It’s like everyone’s nightmare,” says Jacob Richmond, describing the life of a playwright during the rehearsal process. “Someone has found your book and they’re reading it out loud.”

The young writer, whose play Small Returns opens at the Monument-National tonight (June 6), finds the experience excruciating. And yet, Richmond chose to write for the theatre because “the immediacy of it, the collective work is so exciting.” Growing up as a theatre brat may have had something to do with it too, although he says that he never dreamed of going into the family business (his father’s a dramaturge-director, his mother, an actor-director).

His first full-length play, Qualities of Zero, premiered here in 2000, winning a MECCA for best new text, then a production at the Tarragon won the praise of Toronto critics. With this new play, Richmond’s November Company moves out of the confines of Players’ Theatre into the well-equipped Salle DuMaurier of the Monument-National. Small Returns is co-produced by infinitheatre.

This show has one of the most impressive casts and crew working on it that I’ve ever seen in anglo Montreal. Alison Darcy, Sean Devine, Diana Fajrajsl, Alain Goulem, Harry Hill, Catherine Tassé and Robin Wilcock may well provide one of the best ensemble acting experiences of the season. Set and costume design is by two-time MECCA winner Eo Sharp, with lighting by the sought-after Robin A. Paterson. The production is directed by no less of a Canadian theatre eminence than Brian Richmond, who happens to be Jacob’s dad.

It becomes immediately clear on seeing the interaction between the two men that this is not a case of a doting father indulging his son (nor, for that matter, of a young guy inviting the old man in out of a sense of duty). They interact as two artists who clearly respect and admire each other’s work. There was some discussion, prior to beginning rehearsals, of how Jacob would address Brian during the process. Jacob, afraid of sounding like the nerdy kid whining “Da-ad”, really wanted to call the director “Brian” like everybody else in the company. Brian wasn’t keen on this idea, but says he’s getting used to it.

Small Returns is a satire focusing on three employees at a collection agency. It’s a setting that Jacob knows firsthand due to a three-month stint as a debt collector at the age of 19. A story about greed—the individual kind, as well as the institutionalized greed of corporations—Brian Richmond says that Small Returns is darker than Qualities. “But it’s funny,” he hastens to add, conscious that the word “dark” doesn’t necessarily sell tickets.
Part of what the November Company does is play with theatrical form and “performance energy.” Jacob wants to create work that is truly theatrical, in the sense that it really couldn’t work in any other medium, specifically the screen. His work, like that of his close friend John Mounsteven (This I Know), is about mixing it up, shifting styles, mixing media to create theatre for a younger generation (most of the founders of the company are in their mid-20s). It’s not about dumbing down in any way, it’s just that, as the playwright says, “We should acknowledge that the 20th century happened.” :

Small Returns, to June 23 at Salle DuMaurier, Monument- National, $18–23, 871-2224