It’s not a new play. As Bracebridge goes, the plot is classic fare: local council fumbles public buildings. Themes are unchanged, too: red ink, black humour, and crying the blues.
The production is merely updated for current audience relevance: digital revolution renders existing equipment obsolete. Plus a new cast: Schoolman’s role is admirably performed by Larry Hope, Trillium Lakeland District School Board director; Mayor’s action is taken by the estimable Gordon Graydon Smith.
Mayor’s script needs rewrite, though: the problem wasn’t failure to raise money, but trying to raise money for a flawed idea. A school board runs schools, not professional playhouses. The Rene Caisse Theatre is in permanent lockdown. Its piano tuner is told to come back on the weekend when school’s out. Its volunteer operators are told they cannot sell liquor to patrons on school property – although Rotarians could, for their “South Pacific” production, and MP Tony Clement did, for his fundraiser featuring Brian Mulroney.
“Co-Location Blues” is secular adaptation of scripture: “The sins of the father shall be visited upon his children.” That’s rendered politically as: “The sins of a mayor shall be inflicted upon his successors in office.”
Bracebridge has a history of mashing-up functions with nothing in common but a town budget. From first planning in 1879 of a town centre building on Dominion Street, the idea was to construct a town hall and “engine house” (for the fire brigade). When completed in 1881 Bracebridge Town Hall had a third function: a splendid second storey theatre.
The council chamber was used for poultry judging competitions for several years, with caged chickens from far and wide clucking and laying eggs. For decades the theatre hosted everything from fabled Pauline Johnson reciting her poetry to full-costume Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. When the structure burned in December 1957, council chambers, municipal offices, the theatre, and fire department were all lost in a single night.
Around 1900 Bracebridge council had been envious of Gravenhurst’s splendid Opera House, with its co-located municipal offices and well-designed theatre, so tried selling the Town Hall to Andrew Carnegie for a “free library,” intending to use his money for an edifice surpassing Gravenhurst’s. When Carnegie balked at that ruse, Councillor George Thomas hastily proposed, instead, building the library on a tiny sloping triangle of land in which Turkish Baths would be co-located. Another bomb. Council finally provided a tiny patch of flat land on Manitoba Street, so small it cursed successor councils with landlocked problems.
Since the 1800s, Bracebridge plays have been staged in two hotels, the Carnegie Library, school auditoriums, churches, and a half-dozen other venues. The early 2000s campaign to build a new playhouse rightly focused on downtown locations. The Giaschi family, pillar of cinematic entertainment, had to point out, when approached, that a movie house isn’t constructed like a stage theatre must be.
In the end, putting the theatre inside a working schoolhouse was sold on illusory benefits: heating bills shared, and snowplowing, one janitor to clean both, drama students with state-of-the-art facilities. All vaporized when a school’s needs and policies got pitted against the incompatible requirements of a theatrical centre.
Though the theatre is good, its location condemns it to perpetual failure. In debt from inception and equipment now past its best-before date, the Rene Caisse landed on Mayor’s head as a facility fated to fail.
“Co-Location Blues” is a morality play on the circularity of nemesis: Mayor is distraught; his energies dissipate in the shadow of bad decisions taken by predecessors even as he tries to burnish their legacy of ill-conceived public buildings. He will not pull the plug. Instead, he pays-forward his fate onto future councils by co-locating a public library with a hockey arena, likewise on the outer perimeter of town.
