Factory Tneatre opened the season last night with The Waltz by Marie Beath Badian in a production by Nina Lee Aquino.  It’s a one acter that’s partly a sort of classic “coming of age” story and, rather more, about what identity and belonging mean in Canada today.  Our two characters are Bea Klassen (played by Ericka Leobrera); sixteen years old, part filipina, part Scandawegian growing up in Saskatchewan; currently on her own at a remote cottage armed with a crossbow, and RJ Alvarez (played by Anthony Perpuse); second generation filipino, clever and nerdy, has lived all his life in Scarborough but is off to UBC to be as far as possible from his family.  He has made a diversion from his trip to meet someone from his mother’s past who is somehow connected to Bea but that character never shows up.

So we have a girl of mixed ancestry, over shadowed by an athletic and more Scandawegian sister, growing up n the part of Canada where being from somewhere else is a bit weird and a boy from the place nobody is from where being from somewhere else is universal.  If Toronto represents a slightly alien, scarcely Canadian thing to many Canadians then Scarborough perhaps plays that role for those of us in the rest of Tronner.  Scarborough’s newness is striking.  Even the schools are named for people we remember; Pierre Eliot Trudeau, Pope John Paul II.  In my neighbourhood they are named for long forgotten minor royals like the Duke of Connaught.  But when they were built Scarborough looked a bit like a hillier Saskatchewan.  In identity terms it’s tabula rasa.

So how does it play out?  Slowly, fitfully and awkwardly; which, of course, is exactly what one expects with these two characters.  It’s also very funny.  Obviously just mentioning Saskatchewan or Scarborough will get a laugh in Toronto (biggest audience laugh of the night came from a mention of UoT’s Scarborough campus)..  But it’s more than Scarborough jokes.  The writing is clever and the execution exact; the timing is terrific, the direction is spot on and the acting is top notch.  The denouement turns on a mixture of beer chugging and debutante dance choreography and nobody gets shot with a crossbow.

Along the way there are a number of digressions into the nature of romantic love and its role in life and literature.  The “love at first sight” transgressive marriage of the Alvarez parents that turns sour.  Bea’s dismissal of the idea despite the fact that seems to have been pretty much the case with her (apparently happily married) parents.  Multiple references to Romeo and Juliet.  The nuanced depiction of the love/hate relationship between two teenagers who are attracted to each other despite themselves.  It could just be cutesy and twee but it manages not to be.

There are a lot of new plays in Toronto about immigration and the immigrant experience.  In May I reviewed Pamela Mala Sinha’s New; a review that was very much coloured by my own experiences as a first generation immigrant. This one extends the time frame into the second generation which means that it asks different questions about identity and assimilation and, like New, it combines humour with some really thought provoking moments.  It’s well worth seeing.

The Waltz plays at Factory Theatre until September 17th.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz