Arthur Holden, left, Howard Rosenstein, Jean-Guy Bouchard, Sheena Gazé-Deslandes (partially hidden), Ellen David in the newsroom.
Photograph by: Dave Sidaway, The Gazette
Good, you’re reading this. That’s a relief.
Because if you believe what you see at the theatre, a newspaper like ours should be dead already. The Daily Miracle, a bleak new satire by ex-Gazette copy editor David Sherman, makes that point as bitingly as a killer quote.
“I love hearing the presses,” says a keen new hire at a Montreal newspaper called the Star, the fictional setting of the play. “It’s like being on a big ship.”
“Yeah,” a cynical veteran replies, “the Titanic.”
Welcome to the machine, what’s left of it.
It’s the night shift, and a skeleton staff of four – supervising editor Benjamin (played by Howard Rosenstein), copy editors Marty and Carrie (Arthur Holden and Sheena Gazé-Deslandes) and reporter Elizabeth (Ellen David) – are trying to put out the paper. There’ll be a weather story (it’s snowing outside – in April), a Pet-of-the-Day photo, and the usual mix of sex, scandal and violence. In a boardroom offstage, management is holding a secret meeting that bodes ill for the future of the paper.
A fifth character – a French-Canadian janitor named Rolland (Jean-Guy Bouchard) who calls himself “the frog who cleans the commode” – used to be a unionized compositor at the paper before those jobs were eliminated. Now he’s waiting for the boom to fall again.
Directed by Guy Sprung, the Infinitheatre production rings as true and heartfelt as an obituary. There are mixed metaphors in reporters‚ raw copy (“like a snowball picking up steam”), annoying calls from readers (always about the same missing ingredient in a zucchini cake recipe), computer screens that freeze on deadline, and lots of deskers’ lingo (“hold that head for final,” “the fixes are in,” and, of course, “I’ll OK the overtime”).
It’s all very contemporary, very Canadian, ripped from the headlines. There are references to the locked-out workers of Le Journal de Montréal, media “integration” à la Quebecor, cost-cutting by the Star’s parent company, Westpress (sound familiar, Canwest-watchers?), outsourcing of headline-writing to Ontario (“the vampires in Etobicoke”) and bans on vocabulary like Palestinian “militants” (they’re “terrorists” – got a problem with that?).
Over 90 uninterrupted minutes, Sherman’s black humour gets great delivery by the cast, especially Holden as the desker who has come back medicated from burnout, but whose pill-popping can barely contain his bitterness at having to package dross day in, day out. Skinny, shaven-headed, bow-tied, he looks like human sacrifice to the corrupt gods of industry, and he gets the best lines before he goes.
When the night editor doesn’t want to run a scoop in the next day’s paper about management’s mystery meeting in the boardroom, Marty mockingly tells him he’s right: “Real news might confuse people.” Benjamin, the jaded son of the paper’s star columnist in a grander era, tells Marty to lighten up: “It’s only a job, Marty – it’s not the priesthood.” “I know,” Marty quips. “Priests get sexual favours.”
Appropriately, the play is staged in a vestige of a bygone era – the empty swimming pool of the Bain St. Michel, in Mile End, Infinitheatre’s home. With a realistic set (designed by James Lavoie, who also did the costumes) of melamine desks, computer monitors, fluorescent lights, recycling bins, page proofs, a water cooler and portraits of prize-winning hacks on the back wall, you’re left wondering what will survive of the newspaper industry: form or function?
The miracle, I suppose, is that we’re still around to ask the question – and that you can read it right here, in print. Maybe there’s hope yet.
The Daily Miracle, by David Sherman, runs through Feb. 14 at the Bain St. Michel, 5300 St. Dominique St. Tickets $20, $15 student/senior. Call 514-987-1774 or go to www.infinitheatre.com.
jheinrich@thegazette.canwest.com
