Canada's forgotten history on stage with Festival's 'The Real McCoy"
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Andrew Moodie’s much-anticipated stage show depicting the life of 19th-century inventor Elijah McCoy - The Real McCoy - opened at Blyth Memorial Hall last weekend, and audiences have been left impressed by the powerful new production.
Peter Bailey as Elijah McCoy brings so much life and illumination to this enigmatic historical figure. McCoy, born to runaway slaves in rural Southwestern Ontario, was an inventor who is now best remembered as the innovator of steam engine lubricating systems, although he held many other patents. The Real McCoy seeks not only to shine a spotlight on this largely forgotten genius, but to draw attention to the very fact that he was forgotten. The intentional erasure of the history of Canadians of colour is something that can be easy to ignore, but The Real McCoy seeks to change that. Moodie’s eloquent dialogue and Bailey’s emotive acting fill the vacuum created by our accepted history with the mercurial energy of things hinted at, but not known. This is the story of a great man, and a real man, about whom all that is known comes from record keeping, anecdotes and patent records.
Even in life, while McCoy’s inventions were in high demand, white business owners went to great lengths to obscure the fact that such innovations were the brainchild of a Black man. Compare this scant evidence to the lengthy and detailed biographies one can find about other great inventors of the same time period, or even the Donnelly family of Lucan, of which so much has been written that even Gil Garratt’s abridgement of their story, originally told by James Reaney, is a tale that takes three nights to tell in full.
But rather than shy away from it, Moodie and his team embrace the murkiness of the unknowable, offering up a largely fictionalized account of the life of Elijah McCoy that still honours and lifts up his legacy. While he may not be the ‘real’ McCoy, Bailey’s interpretation of the inventor is a nuanced portrait - a man who is capable of great joy and even greater frustrations, who sees a bigger world than the one in which he lives. The subject matter of the play is at times very heavy and tinged with darkness, but it also has moments of great levity. McCoy was subjected to much intolerance and bigotry, but he is not depicted here as a victim. When the man is faced with adversity, he confronts it, secure in the knowledge that his inventions have a value greater than the prejudices of man.
The play’s tight-knit cast all inhabit multiple roles, save for Bailey, and minimalist set pieces are used to maximum effect. Particularly effective is the use of rotatable crates that pull triple duty as scene setters, prop storage, and symbols of the way in which a great mind sets itself to solve a problem. Matthew G. Brown as young Elijah rotates the cubes endlessly as he tries to put the pieces together of a puzzle only he can see. A simple washbasin, never referred to, but only seen, quickly becomes one of the most powerful and evocative symbols of the play, with a meaning that changes subtly from scene to scene.
McCoy’s inventions were often very complex advancements in niche industries that many modern audiences know nothing about. Trying to illustrate the importance of a now-defunct technology can be difficult, but The Real McCoy’s production knows when to elucidate on the subject of steam engines, and how much - there aren’t a lot of technical schematics in this show, but there aren’t none, either.
Alicia Richardson and Nawa Nicole Simon fill each one of their characters with their own inner lives that shine through even when they are given only a few lines. The women in McCoy’s life are uniformly impressive, from his educated mother to his socially-conscious second wife, and their positive influence on him is clear throughout each scene. The influence of his father George, played with conviction by Xuan Fraser, is more complicated, but no less important to the development of the young inventor. Fraser’s deft physicality also leads to some of the show’s most humorous moments.
Richard Alan Campbell and Michael Pollard, the show’s two white actors, are put to good use in a myriad of roles, and the two of them have a lot of fun playing the educators, naysayers, businessmen, farmhands, ladies, and mustache-havers that McCoy may have encountered in his life. The two switch between accents at a break-neck speed, and are just two deeply entertaining gentlemen to watch.
While the sets may be minimal, the costumes designed by Tamara Marie Kucheran are bursting with the details of the time period. The stage itself could be anytime - it’s the costumes that lock the characters into their era. The complex layers, gathers and fasteners all speak to a time before the modern conveniences of stretch fabric, zippers and Velcro. Were McCoy a more clothing-oriented man, he would have found the various workings of a maid’s uniform to be woefully inefficient.
Letter writing is a key element of this story, and the speedy, on-stage delivery of McCoy’s correspondence is well juxtaposed with the actual length of time that would have passed between each round of letters. The distance between actors is only a few steps, but each step contains months of occurrences. In the time it takes to hand over a letter, the person to whom it is addressed may change, move or die.
The details of the end of McCoy’s life are as lean as any other in his story, but what is known is both dark and disturbing. Even here, that which is horrific is fleshed out and infused with a real beauty. Bailey and Simon give particularly powerful performances in these last moments that should not be missed.
If you are interested in learning about the life of one of Southwestern Ontario’s most important innovators, don’t miss The Real McCoy at the Blyth Festival, running until Sept. 9.