If I’d been asked to do a mind-map of what I knew about Vincent Van Gogh, I would have mentioned sunflowers and madness, Starry Night, Starry Starry Night, losing his ear, eating paint, self-portraits, suicide, and not getting recognition while he was alive. I’d remember looking at the outside of the Van Gogh museum on my short visit to Amsterdam and deciding that after exploring the Rijksmuseum all morning I needed lunch more than another gallery. And I’d thank Erin Hutchison for reminding me of a couple of those in the script of her musical Regression, from last summer’s Fringe, in which Tom Blazejewicz played the spirit of Van Gogh.
Calgary playwright Michael Czuba’s After Mourning – Before Van Gogh includes the artist Vincent Van Gogh (Andrew Ritchie) as a character, but focuses more on the family members who support him, especially his brother Theo (Steven Greenfield) and his sister-in-law Joanna Bonger (Lora Brovold and Donna-Leny Hansen).
The action unfolds in a non-linear way. At first, it was very disjointed, resonating with both Theo’s and Vincent’s struggles with mental illness. Projections by Matt Schuurman convey the characters being surrounded by Vincent’s paintings, in their home and in their minds.
Vincent’s sister-in-law Joanna is portrayed by two actors, Lora Brovold and Donna-Leny Hansen. Vincent’s brother Theo had struggled to set up gallery placements and viewings for Vincent’s paintings, but after both of them die young, Joanna inherits the challenge, along with inheriting Vincent’s work in trust for her young son Vincent Willem.
The use of two performers to show Johanna’s narrative arc was fascinating. Brovold and Hansen have a strong resemblance, enhanced by similar body language, and their portrayal of a passionate and determined woman of another era is thoroughly satisfying.
The split wasn’t as simple as, the older portrayal is completely recollective and the younger one is active, either. Brovold’s Johanna engages with her now-grown son Vincent Willem (Andrew Ritchie), by turns protective and petulant, and is shown making decisions of how to translate and market Vincent’s letters, and which paintings to sell where. She also reminisces, talks to her deceased husband Theo, and shifts into and out of overlapping scenes with her younger self. The younger Joanna of Hansen also has her share of recollections, as her first husband Theo becomes ill soon after their marriage. While honouring his memory and Vincent’s she must raise her young son alone, support her household financially, and act as Vincent’s artistic executor to find him the recognition he deserves. The script shows her brother Dries (Fatmi Yassine El Fassi El Fihri) urging her to accept their father’s invitation to move in and be cared for – but she chooses to move to a town where she can open a boarding-house for artists.
One of the most visually-effective moments is when the grieving widow plunges a white garment into a washtub, dying her clothes black for mourning. Another effective detail is the way the older Joanna hides her arthritis-cramped hands in her shawl after a session of translation work.
But, as in the title of the play, there is more to Joanna’s character than either mourning or making Van Gogh famous. At one point she muses about all the other things she could have accomplished – she could have worked for women’s rights, advocated for women’s health – and it did not feel anachronistic, but consistent with the determined woman we saw. She is also explicit about Theo not being the only/last love of her life – even though it makes her son uncomfortable, she reminisces about her relationship with second husband Johan (El Fassi El Fihri), and about other men she’d been with in between.
I was enjoying watching the performance – at one specific point I was so captivated by the beautiful projections that I forgot there were actors on stage – but for a time I thought I wasn’t seeing enough narrative arc to recognize what would be a satisfying ending. Yet I was wrong – I’d seen the threads leading to resolution wound through the other scenes, and the ending worked for me.
After Mourning – Before Van Gogh has two co-directors, John Hudson and Lana Michelle Hughes. This production is its premiere. It runs until April 6th, and tickets are available here.
Ephemeral Pleasures 