by Brad Fraser
From there I followed the plot where I wanted to and deviated where I wanted to. The ranch setting spoke to me of my rural youth, and the creepily sexy and bloody original plot gave me plenty to play with. My only rules were no nudity and no profanity, to disprove those critics who’d said my main appeal was easy shock effects.
I took the train into Toronto to stay with Bob O for a weekend, who would then drive me back to Stratford and see a few shows. He was always a gracious and patient host when I was in TO.
I did some partying that weekend and ended up at the tubs one night. An edgy, desperate air had replaced the collegial energy I remembered from my first visits. A couple of guys approached me, but when they revealed they wanted to be fucked without a condom, I demurred. As usual I ended up beating off into my towel before heading back to Bob O’s.
Monday morning, while driving back to Stratford, Bob broke off whatever inanity we’d been nattering about to say, “Now look, things have changed a bit since the last time I saw you.”
I knew from his tone of voice and my growing familiarity with these sorts of conversations what was to come. I said, “When did you find out?”
His eyes filmed over. “A few months ago.”
“Are you okay? We can pull over.”
He shook his head. “I’m good.”
“You’re not tempted to drive headlong into traffic and take me with you?”
He laughed, wiping at each eye with a quick finger. “No.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Good.”
We drove on for a while saying nothing, then from him: “I had this sore throat and my neck glands were swollen—we know what that means, right? So I got the test.”
I nodded, lighting us both cigarettes and handing one to him.
“Full-out breakdown. Why me?” he said, making loud, comical crying sounds. “It’s so weird what your body can do. I felt something different inside me, something that didn’t belong there and I just—just—curled into myself.”
“Any other symptoms?”
He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Nothing so far, but we know how these things work.”
I nodded.
“Look, this is just between us, right? I haven’t told many people and if they found out at work…” He was teaching at a Catholic school.
“I’ll have to tell Pete.”
“Will he be okay with it?”
Pete, who’d just done an intimate show with John Moffat, was fine with it.
The highlight of the trip for Bob and me was seeing Susan Wright in a wistful but compelling production of O’Neill’s Ah Wilderness! After he left I pounded out a rough first draft of The Ugly Man while Pete finished up his obligations to the festival. I was dying to get home, where we had to find a new place to live that could contain both of us.
We looked at a number of apartments before deciding on a compact two-bedroom at the Arlington, one of Edmonton’s few remaining historical buildings.
We turned in our draft of The Revenger’s Tragedy, met with the director a couple of times to refine and polish, and left her to it. Having to mine a classic text so thoroughly had been an amazing exercise and, although the production is quite rightly lost to history, working on it informed my redrafting of The Ugly Man significantly.
We got our first computer that fall. The next six months was a vortex of misuse, ignorance, lost files and screaming frustration, but even with all the bullshit I could see the advantages it had over the typewriter. The second draft of The Ugly Man was the first thing I wrote entirely on a computer. I never used my typewriter again.
We decorated the apartment for Christmas. I gave Pete an expensive camera. He gave me a vintage Batmobile he knew I wanted for my growing comic-merchandise collection. We had a quiet New Year’s Eve. We watched movies and cried unashamedly at the sad parts. We wrote some comedy bits for radio stations across the country. We partied with friends, playing cards and Risk while drinking beer and smoking endless joints on those cold Edmonton nights. We got a kitten from a friend whose parents’ farm cat had had a litter. We named him Spooz and spoiled him rotten in that anthropomorphically chauvinistic way many couples without children have with their pets.
That same Christmas, Randy got married. He’d been dating a hairdresser with dark sparkling hair and eyes for a couple of years, and he asked us to spend Christmas Day at his folks’ place for a small wedding. As they said their “I dos” I looked at Pete. His expression was thoughtful and a bit sad.
I knew Pete was being razzed by the straight guys he worked with about our relationship, and their disapproval was just as strong as that of my gay friends whose “this guy has got to be gay or you’ve got to be deluded” subtext was written in neon.
A couple times a week Pete would be very late returning home. I didn’t ask him about it and he never offered anything. We frequently told one another how much we loved each other. We cuddled, but we rarely sucked each other’s cocks anymore.
* * *
—
Early in the new year, 1990, Crow’s Theatre found the money to fly me to Toronto for the premiere of Remains. Pete was doing a show and wouldn’t be able to accompany me.
I was nervous as hell. My track record in Toronto wasn’t great and I had no idea what Jim Millan would do with the show. Bob O put me up, and I had a couple to days to catch up with old friends and burn through the bars before the opening.
The Poor Alex Theatre was just around the corner from Bob O’s apartment in the Annex neighbourhood, and I made a point of dropping by and introducing myself to Mackenzie Gray, the producer, and the rest of the theatre staff. I was invited to the preview that night but declined for fear of how I might react if I didn’t like what I saw. But later I returned to the theatre and listened to the last fifteen minutes through the crack in the door leading into the cramped auditorium. It was only a small audience, but what I heard and saw plunged me into a pit of despair. It all sounded so stagey and fake.
When I got back to Bob O’s he said, “Well?”
I shook my head sadly. “I’ll give you your money back if you insist.” I knew he’d already purchased tickets for later in the run.
He laughed. “Oh, it can’t be that bad.”
“It totally could,” I replied, then shut myself in the guest room and cried over the phone to Pete about how the show was sure to bomb in uptight old Toronto.
I’d invited Paul Reynolds to be my date for the opening. I’d learned he was HIV-positive and having health issues. But he’d finally found love and was genuinely happy with a man his own age. As we approached the theatre I cautioned him that I’d had no control over what we were about to see. He laughed and squeezed my hand, saying, “Darling, I never know what you’re going to give us. That’s why I love you.” We hugged spontaneously and went into the theatre.
Jim Millan had found a truly remarkable company for his production. Brent Carver, who was a bona fide Canadian star and whom I’d seen in Romeo and Juliet at the Citadel when I was in high school, played David. Lenore Zann, whom I’d also seen at the Citadel, in Hey, Marilyn!, a rather tepid musical version of the life of Marilyn Monroe that Lenore had shone in, was engaged as Candy. Daniel Kash played Bernie; Duncan Ollerenshaw played Kane; Arlene Mazerolle played Jerri; Joe-Norman Shaw was Robert; and Kristina Nicoll played Benita. The dreary performance I’d witnessed through the crack between doors the night before was nowhere in evidence on opening. The cast was loud, hard and strong. When the laughs started in the first scene I knew we’d be okay. Everyone hung around the after-show party until very late.
This was the first time I met Susan Wright, an esteemed actress I had admired in a number of productions over the years. She, along with her sisters Janet and Anne and brother John, who lived in Edmonton, were the first Canadian family of the stage. She was Brent Carver’s best friend of many years and had shown up
to support him. When Brent introduced us, she was halfway through a twenty-sixer of vodka but still managed to sound sober as she complimented me on the play. At some point Brent and I staggered back to his place and crashed in his bed. When we got up the next morning the door to Susan’s bedroom was open and she greeted us blearily from her rumpled bed. I felt like I’d woken up in the Canadian theatre version of Buckingham Palace.
Brent and I encountered one another frequently throughout the coming decade, and many of those encounters would culminate with us drunk and stumbling into bed. He was one of the most gifted performers I’ve ever known, and his interpretation of David McMillan had been, like John Moffat’s, a revelation.
When I got home Pete was dying to know what I’d thought of the show. I’d been diplomatic on the phone, always telling Pete how great the performances were, because I had some serious reservations about the direction. Jim’s production had ignored the play’s only stage direction: “None of the actors should leave the stage unless absolutely necessary.” I had stipulated this specifically because of the problems I’d encountered with the episodic structure of Wolfboy and its maddening blackouts.
I’d learned there are many ways to convey the passage of time and the dislocation of space on the stage without having to resort to blackouts so actors can hurry offstage and rush through frequent and pointless costume changes. In most cases the most minor of costume alterations—a sweater, a scarf, a blazer—will suffice and the audience won’t be the least disturbed. In truth, the only thing the actor really has to change to indicate a shift in time or space is their attitude. I wrote Remains to challenge the ways we usually created theatre, and whenever someone resorted to blackouts between the staccato scenes I let my disappointment be known. But the one thing I will never deny is that Jim Millan is a brilliant producer.
For the next few days we went about our lives in the usual fashion. I picked up shifts at Chianti when we needed money and otherwise reworked Young Art, which I was prepping for the next Teen Fest.
I was also casting Remains for Workshop West. Pete was reconfirmed as Kane, Kate had agreed to play Candy—brave, considering the character was loosely based on her—and the rest of the cast was filled with Edmonton’s best actors.
Five days after the show opened in Toronto, an envelope arrived from Crow’s Theatre containing a photocopy of the review in the Toronto Star. To my surprise, the review was an unqualified rave. I read it out to Pete, emphasizing the passages that praised the originality of the script. Other reviews trickled in over the next few days and ranged from raves to raves with slight reservations.
A few mornings later the phone rang at an unusually early hour when we were still asleep. Pete answered, listened for a moment, then said “He’s right here” and handed me the phone.
I squinted at him, reached for my glasses and whispered, “Who is it?”
He said, “Your agent.”
I stared at him for a moment. I’d completely forgotten I had an agent.
It wasn’t Ralph Zimmerman, who I’d initially signed with. It was Shain Jaffe, former stage manager, now the second member of Great North Artists Management, who handled the writers. The first thing he said to me was, “Are we still representing you?”
I shot Pete an impressed look. “Well, no one else seems to be representing me.”
“What kind of contract did you sign with Crow’s?”
“The standard Playwrights Guild contract.”
He said, “Great. The show’s a huge hit here.”
I sat up in bed. “It is?”
“The whole town’s talking about it. We saw it the other night. Ralph thought it would be a good idea to give you a call just to remind you that you do have an agent.”
“Do you think I’ll need an agent?”
“I do. Give me a call when you’re more awake and we’ll get to know each other better.”
I hung up. Pete gave me a questioning look.
“Apparently the show’s a hit.”
Pete said, “What does that mean?”
I said, “I have no idea,” and pulled him close, huddling back under the covers for another hour’s sleep before we both had to get to our waitering jobs. Neither of us slept, though. Neither of us spoke. We both knew things were going to change.
* * *
—
When I spoke with Shain later it was clear he thought Remains could have a strong commercial life. He was smart and aggressive. I liked that. He told me he’d fly out to Edmonton to see my production of the show and we’d speak further then.
David Skelton, who always pushed me away from the representational toward the more abstract or expressionistic, came up with a set that was a sort of exploding star with plenty of triangular platforms that had to be negotiated carefully given the complex physical life of the play. There were no doors or walls, but there were areas where people could be hidden for surprise entrances and exits as needed. There were no offstage costume changes and no blackouts. Following my own dictates, none of the actors left the stage unless they absolutely had to.
This was the first production I directed that had nudity in it. All the actors knew this was something they were going to have to do when they were hired for the play. Honestly, I felt uncomfortable directing actors when they were naked, but hid it by being as clinical as possible while always keeping my eyes focused on their faces.
Shows like Oh! Calcutta!, a series of smutty sex sketches that ran endlessly in the seventies, and I Love, You Baby Blue had used nudity to force the audience to deal with the comic potential of the naked body. But I wanted to create an erotic atmosphere where the audience could believe sex was actually taking place between the characters to the point where the audience might actually become aroused. I’d always felt the stage had this potential for raw eroticism and it was rarely explored.
In the end, what made the nudity erotic was what I didn’t allow the audience to see. Strategic lighting, carefully placed set and costume pieces and the actors’ intensity made everything going on seem much more graphic than it was. One might have caught a glimpse of shaft, ass or vulva, but only very quickly. Critics have often carped that male actors shouldn’t do nude sex scenes because it’s so obvious they aren’t hard—and getting a hard-on on cue from people who can rarely get a fake slap right is almost impossible—so I ensured the shadowy mime made people think they were seeing a lot more than they actually were.
There was a great deal of press in Edmonton before the show opened based on the reactions in Calgary and Toronto. I was on the cover page of everything.
Opening night, as I arrived fifteen minutes before curtain looking as suave as someone who looks like me can look, I felt every eye turn to me as I came down the stairs into the lobby. I had always dreamed of this moment, but now that it was happening the only thing I felt was self-conscious and pudgy.
I was tremendously proud of that production. It had a strong sense of visual and physical rhythm and the scenes were all exact and highly charged. Certain lines that were specific to Edmonton literally stopped the show. The audience stood as one at the end, and the party afterwards was full of energy and optimism. I was so busy being congratulated and fussed over that I hardly saw Pete until we left.
In the cab home I took his hand across the seat and said, “I think this is going to happen. I really do.”
He smiled and squeezed my hand, saying nothing.
The reviews were laudatory, but they didn’t really matter. Word of mouth from the previews had the box office phones ringing off the hook. There was no time for my usual crash after opening, as I was appearing on at least one of the local radio or television stations every day. In both Toronto and Edmonton, a secondary wave of press was starting to happen. People were now writing about the play’s success as well as airing the views of those who objected to the play—and they were many. Thankfully the show al
so had many passionate fans and defenders who filled houses every night. For me, the most important thing was ticket sales, which were over 100 percent thanks to overflow seating.
Shain was on the phone to me every few days. The show in Toronto had been successful enough for Jim Millan to already be plotting an extension. Théâtre de Quat’Sous in Montreal had inquired about the rights in Quebec, which was quite a coup, as very few English-Canadian playwrights were produced in French.
Pete hung with the cast a lot after the show. Things between us weren’t exactly strained, but I knew he was feeling like I had in Stratford the previous summer—all but invisible. Local gossip columnists were running items about something I’d said to another theatre artist, or about a prominent politician. I was already well known at most of the city’s best restaurants because of my years as a waiter, but now there would be a palpable stir among the patrons in the room when Pete and I entered for a bite to eat. People said hello to me on the street. I began to get invitations to all sorts of social functions I’d been overlooked for previously. Actors and directors who were coming through town would make a point of calling up and inviting me for drinks.
I also began to make a bit of money. I splurged on a new TV, VCR and stereo. I bought Pete an expensive lens for the expensive camera I’d given him for Christmas. We no longer had to scrounge and save to have money for beer or pot. We’d do cocaine at least one night on the weekend. I went from cheap T-shirts to expensive T-shirts. It was all a lot of fun, but I could feel Pete bridling because we were spending my money, not our money.
At a party one night I met a middle-aged newly out lesbian named Peni Christopher. Peni was an assistant-editor at the Edmonton Bullet, the weekly alternative-press giveaway of the time. I was already quite well known for my caustic letters to the editor at various publications, and Peni felt I should have a regular column. I loved the idea and threw myself into it as much as my time would permit, doing my best to keep local columnists and critics honest by pointing out their deficiencies and hypocrisies. I was green, but I trusted my ability to turn a phrase, and Peni helped make my work more coherent than it was in first-draft form. The tone and observations of my column occasionally sent the city, and particularly the theatre community, into howls of outrage. I loved finding ways to press their buttons.