Old men and the river

Hudson Village Theatre open their season with the bucolic but corny The Fly Fisher’s Companion

Hudson Village Theatre have put the electrodes to a 2005 work by Nova Scotia playwright Michael Melski, The Fly Fisher’s Companion, reviving it to kick start their busy summer season.

Melski’s 2004 hit play about violence in kid’s sports, Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad, won the playwright both attention and multiple productions across Canada, picking up a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination along the way. For his follow-up, Melski went rural and folksy.

Set in Cape Breton’s Margaree River in the spring of 1985, it follows old buddies Wes and Don  embarking on what could be their last fishing trip together. As they gear up in their shared cottage, the contrast between the friends is sharp. Wes (played by Bill Rowat) is a sometime writer and full-time dreamer/philosopher who loves to relax. Don (Michel Perron) is a fidgety busi­nessman who runs an ice cream shop—he’d rather be at work instead of standing in a stream with hip waders listening to Wes pontificate.

The old coot factor is alarmingly high, close to Grandpa Simpson levels for much of the show, as Rowat and Perron bicker, tell bad jokes, moan about their health and take the mickey at every opportunity. Corniness abounds with banter like “you old son of a shoe salesman,” and every tiny fish on Don’s line is a “leviathan.”

Rowat and Perron are convincing as friends with a 60-year history who admit they’ve helped and damaged one another as much as any husband and wife. “How the hell did we ever get stuck with each other?” they wonder.

Michel Perron is always an entertaining actor. A large man who carries himself like a ballerina, he has an endless, Jackie Gleason-like energy on stage: humming maniacally as he cleans a fish, spluttering outbursts, pulling on a shirt backwards.

Bill Rowat channels the ghost of Walter Brennan throughout, with a croaking voice and spry, old-timer gambol. So overjoyed to wander in nature, he wonders at times if he shouldn’t just end it all and let the river carry him away, thinking it would be a more ‘natural’ way to go. “Hypothermia is also natural,” Don shoots back, “but hardly recommended.”

Fly-fishing is the all-purpose metaphor for life’s vicissitudes here, but the frivolity and physical comedy of the first act comes to an abrupt stop after intermission. As Wes reminisces about a young soldier who served alongside them during the war and whom they left on the battlefield—something he won’t let his friend forget—he blurts out that he’s dying.

Director Irene Arseneault has done wonderful work at the theatre in the past (with a deft touch in the coming-of-age musical All Grown Up) but seems mismatched with the material and struggles to get the emotional release of the story without tipping it into cheap sentimentality. I wonder if the respect Arseneault felt towards her seasoned actors prevented her from steering them in more decisive directions, into more than sketches of old age and friendship.

But it’s mainly down to Melski’s script. He was in his early 30s when he wrote the play and wasn’t ready to tackle the perspectives of older men: the fears that come with advancing age, the regrets and bitterness, the grudges friends carry for decades and the knowledge that death will arrive sooner rather than later—it just didn’t ring true. ■

THE FLY FISHER’S COMPANION TO JULY 10 AT HUDSON VILLAGE THEATRE (28 WHARF ROAD, HUDSON). TICKETS AND INFO: (450) 458-5361, VILLAGETHEATRE.CA

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