The Citizen-Blyth Festival 2002, 2002-06-05, Page 5The chase is on
Eric Coates as Will Donnelly chases Kelly McIntosh as Maggie while Dale Wanless drives the
horses in a scene from the 2001 production of The Outdoor Donnellys. The 2002 run of the
production begins June 7. — photo by Off Broadway Photography.
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Congratulations on a great season!
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BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5, 2002. PAGE 5.
Times change, Thompson changes story-telling
By Keith Roulston
Citizen staff
The story of the massacre of the
Donnelly family in Lucan back in
1880 keeps drawing Paul Thompson
back, and with each revisiting of the
legend, the storyteller finds a
different way to tell the story.
hompson's concept of using the
entire village of Blyth to tell the
story created a theatre phenomenon
when it premiered last year, selling
out before the first words were
spoken on the outdoor stage and so
The Outdoor Donnellys has returned
for another year.
The Listowel-born director first
tackled the Donnelly story in 1974,
two years after the first success of
his smash-hit The Farm Show. The
success of the tour of The Farm
Show into small western Ontario
towns where it played everything
from auction barns to the Stratford
Festival Theatre, led him to create a
new show that would speak to the
people of the region. Them
Donnellys was created with a cast
that included some names that later
went on to be huge in Canadian
theatre, movies and television:.
David Fox, Miles Potter, Booth
Savage, Clare Coulter. It played
throughout the area including stints
in the auction barns in Clinton and
Listowel as well as the considerably
more swank surroundings of the
Festival Theatre in Stratford where
it played for four performances.
Thompson was to return to the
Donnelly story in 1979. at the Blyth
Festival and again in the early 2000
with a Young Company show.
But nothing was quite as massive
as the current version which spreads
out over the entire village and
requires a cast of more than 40
amateur actors as well as the
professional company of 10.
The show is even bigger this year
than last, with the addition of an
extra actor and another vignette and
a special all-day version that will
allow lucky audiences (it sold out
long ago) to see all eight vignettes
in one day.
Thompson thinks it's perhaps the
perception of the Donnelly story
that has changed more than his own
vision of it.
"When we first were doing the
shows we were still close enough to
the volatility aspect of the story that,
although it was unrealistic to
imagine your tires being slashed (by
people, unhappy with the rehashing
of the story) you could imagine the
possibility of that without being
considered paranoid."
"What's happened in the
intervening almost 30 years has
been that the town of Lucan has
accepted it as a recognizable aspect
of its history. They're not going
around selling Donnelly keychains
but they're trying to fit the story
within a kind of context of the town
and recognize that it's happened and
recognize the effect it has had on the
psyche of the wider community and
of the country."
The fascination with the Donnelly
story goes far beyond the fact that
five Donnelly family members were
murdered at the hands of their
neighbours. Though five deaths are
horrible, Thompson notes that the
very next year there was a tragedy in
nearby 'London when many times
that many were killed on a steam
boat excursion on the Thames River
yet few people could tell you about
that, while many, many people
remember the Donnelly story.
"What's clear for me right now is
the attraction has to do with the
underlying theme of vulnerability
and because of the vast landscape
that we live in, a large number of us
are potentially vulnerable to random
acts of violence.
"During the early Donnelly story,
Continued on page 6