Belle Moral: A Natural History (15 page)

P
EARL
. What does that mean?

Y
OUNG
F
ARLEIGH
. ’Tis Gaelic.

V
ICTOR
. I know “ ’tis Gaelic” –

F
LORA
. It’s your mother’s clan motto –

C
LAIRE
. It means: “unite”.

Belle Moral: A Natural History
has its origins in an earlier play of mine called
The Arab’s Mouth
, and the story of its evolution is also the story of a creative relationship.
The Arab’s Mouth
was first produced in 1990 by Toronto’s Factory Theatre and its then-artistic director, Jackie Maxwell. An interesting sidebar – and natural history is all about the sidebars – is that, at the time, I nurtured hopes that one day the play might be programmed by the Shaw Festival; this, owing to my passion for the period, as well as my enduring regard for the Festival itself, then under the direction of Christopher Newton. Alas, the mandate had yet to be expanded to include works such as mine that were set but not written during Shaw’s lifetime – just as well, for
The Arab’s Mouth
had some critical evolutionary transformations to undergo before it became
Belle Moral
.

After
The Arab’s Mouth
premiered, I knew that it was not quite finished and, in keeping with my experience as a playwright and collaborator, I fully expected to return to it. I got distracted, how
ever, by another project which I thought would be a play but turned out to be a novel.
Fall On Your Knees
developed many of the themes and images that I had touched on in
The Arab’s Mouth
, and I came to see the play as a progenitor – or, to change metaphors, as a kind of sketch book for the novel. Years went by and I sought to lay to rest the little voice at the back of my mind insisting, “What about me?”
The Arab’s Mouth
had become a ghost that would not rest, and no amount of fiction, or indeed other theatre work, would quiet it. Thus, when Jackie Maxwell invited me to revisit the piece, I was completely delighted and my initial inner response was, “No.” Writing is hard. Rewriting is harder. And I was scared to look that deeply into my creative past, having never glanced at the script in all those intervening years. What would I find upon re-entering that abandoned house? Would the ghosts be angry? Spoiling for a fight? Or in the mood for a party? And what would my much younger self have to say to me now, an experienced writer striding in to turn it all upside down?

The first step was to read the play again after almost fourteen years. I did so, looking and listening for one thing – a heartbeat. There is a good reason why certain ghosts refuse to rest: they’re not dead. There was indeed a heartbeat. A strong one. I was put in mind of a young race horse, all bony, and pounding with vitality, panting with the passion to run, bursting from the starting gate in
all directions at once. It was all over the map, but it was alive.

I did much more work on the script than I, or I think Jackie, expected. Characters and elements of plot that I had once thought of as structurally and thematically integral went the way of the demolition crew without a tremor, clearing the way for new characters as well as new – if certainly fewer – story elements. A great deal had happened in the world and in my life as an artist since 1990, and my world-view had grown. Whereas
The Arab’s Mouth
was an almost truculent assertion of the primacy of the irrational and the relativistic,
Belle Moral
reaches out in two directions to reconcile the extremes of rationalism and romanticism, in an attempt to re-envision and to articulate afresh those core Enlightenment values that engendered the freedom and equality that we take for granted at our peril. Today, the forces of fundamentalism threaten to undo that civilized and precious mess we call democracy, substituting simple answers and ruthless solutions in the place of plurality and debate, promoting superstition and prejudice over curiosity and courage. The Scopes Trial is being replayed in North American schools even as real-life chimeras are being created in labs – and moral vacuums – around the world; this mixture of backward thinking and highly sophisticated technology is potentially explosive.

But I’m essentially a comedian. Which is to say, an informed, jaded, jaundiced, optimist. There
may be unhappy endings to stories, but all stories are happy, because as long as there are stories, there is hope. If even one person – or indeed, creature – is able to emerge from the rubble of our own making to say, “I remember what happened. Listen, and I’ll tell you,” that’s a happy ending. Bearing witness can be just that: the carrying of a heavy load that eventually must be shared. As long as there is one ancient, flea-bitten, parched and starving mariner able to stagger up to a wedding party and tell his or her tale, there is compassion – that insight which makes the tale intelligible and is the progenitor of imagination. And imagination in turn, if it is not Dr Frankenstein’s longed-for spark of life itself, is certainly the spark of civilization.

Belle Moral: A Natural History
is a dark but redemptive comedy. At a narrative level, it is a story of family secrets come to light. It is also the story of the birth and evolution of ideas, and of ways of seeing, and living in, the world. As such, it is truly a play of morals. Stylistically there is fun to be had with its Gothic references, but the tone ought never to stray into pastiche or melodrama. That said, the stakes are high and, even in calmer moments, a sense of urgency is never far below the surface. These characters think quickly and speak articulately. They formulate their thoughts in the moment, and they enjoy argument.

Victor’s lust for life extends to a revelling in his own “romantic martyrdom” – even when he is pouting, he does so with enthusiasm and is never depressive. His geniality, mischievous sarcasm and hell-bent good humour all serve to buoy him up over a well of grief. When that grief splashes up in the first act, and then when it boils over at the end of the second act, it is sudden, genuine and passionate.

Pearl protects herself emotionally with her arch tone and severe attitude toward Victor in particular and weakness in general, but beneath her controlled exterior is a deep love for her brother and unresolved grief at the loss of her mother and the remoteness of her father. If Victor is given to sudden swings between laughter and tears, Pearl switches just as rapidly between “cool” rationalism and white-hot rage.

Dr Reid is a reasonable man who embodies much of what was considered humane and progressive at the time. Indeed, some of his more odious views are still culturally dominant in ways that we might be reluctant to admit, while others are genuinely sound both morally and intellectually. His is the story of a man who is seduced by a second chance; of good intentions gone awry; of the subtle, and crucial, relationship between knowledge and power; and of the very different meanings – or species – of love. Dr Reid is the hero of his own story, a good and ethical man to the end, in his own eyes.

Flora is deceptively dotty on the surface, and fearless at the core. Her “dottiness” is an effect of her good-natured impulse to nurture her loved-ones, combined with her effort to keep track of all the lies and secrets in the family. With her hybrid belief system she is actually more open-minded than many other more sophisticated souls. One imagines her and Einstein chatting together quite happily. She is motivated by love for her family,
but that love is tainted by a guilt that serves to distort her judgment until the final act.

Scene changes are, among other things, an opportunity for the Underworld to assert its presence in the person of the Anubis figure. In the first scene he claims the Bride for the Underworld, and by the third act he is waiting patiently for the chance to claim the Creature/Claire. It should be noted that the Bride is a ghostly evocation of Régine who has been searching the Underworld for her lost child, while hoping not to find her there.

Puppy, in the original production, was “played” by a puppet, specially constructed from a taxidermy mould, painted, and finished with fur. The head and tail detached, and he was operated by the actor playing The Bride/Creature/Claire, in a puppetry style reminiscent of that used in Japanese theatre.

By the end of the play, the world has changed. Gothic shadows have given way to the light of day, corsets disappear, and conformity is knocked aside by a deadly serious playfulness. For a moment, the horizon is unclouded. It is only a matter of time, however, before Dr Reid, and his quest for Utopia, will give rise to the cataclysms of the twentieth century. But for one brief, shining, “belle époque” moment, there is peace, and space for the imagination to run free. —A.M.