Kanika Ambrose’s The Christmas Market opened on Wednesday in the Studio at Crow’s Theatre in a production directed by Philip Akin.  At one level it’s a much needed critique/exposé of Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program and at another it’s basically a very funny comedy of manners.  The two are extremely well integrated so that the horror of the TFWP is a bit of a slow reveal.

It’s the week before Christmas on a farm somewhere in Southern Ontario.  Three workers from the West Indies are spending their first winter in Canada unprepared and without proper winter clothing.  The oldest; Joe (Matthew G. Brown) has spent eight seasons working in Canada and he has found ways of accommodating to his situation.  He’s desperate to celebrate Christmas “just like home”.  Lionel (Danté Prince) is kind of Joe’s protegé.  It’s his fourth year and he has a baby by a local girl but they aren’t talking.  Roy (Savion Roach) is a first timer with a college diploma.  He’s angry about everything including, unfortunately for him, the stuff he has no chance of changing.  There’s also the local, white supervisor Ryan (Brenda Robins) who is not overly bright but has found her own ways of coping with a dead end job for a boss who is something of a bastard.

The guys are living in a trailer and the cramped conditions, exacerbated by Joe’s repeated inviting of Ryan into “their” space makes for a pretty explosive situation.  There’s a catalogue of petty injustices and humiliations that one might think were the result of the attitudes of the boss, Don, but then there’s an incident.  A local woman claims she has been assaulted by someone with an accent.  The police reaction is to demand DNA samples (you jizz into a cup) from all the foreign workers!  The near-enslaved status is as much state policy as individual malice.  And the threat of being sent home and blacklisted is a constant spur to conformity.

But there is a lighter side.  Joe is obsessed with his Christmas and the place in it of The Sound of Music and he’s very funny about it.  There’s a brilliant drunken rendition of the key numbers.  The two younger men are pre-occupied with pussy and have even built an extension to their trailer for their assignations.  Ryan is enigmatic.  Is she making a play for Joe?  But amid the slightly cheesy Christmas preparations  Lionel is trying to figure out how to see his daughter and Roy is trying to right the world’s wrongs.  It doesn’t end well.

The performances, especially perhaps Joe, are really excellent.  All these characters are complex and believable.  The comic timing is spot on.  It’s backed up by effective lighting and sound design.  The intimacy of the Studio goes some way to evoking the cramped living conditions.  It’s ninety minutes of compelling theatre; sharp comedy with a very real underlying message that needs to be heard.

The Christmas Market plays at Crow’s Theatre until December 7th.

Photo credit: Kenya Parsa