FFWD Weekly
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| THEATRE Oliver Twist: A Street Boy's Progress If there's one thing Maja Ardal obviously feels strongly about, it's kids. As artistic director of Toronto's Young People's Theatre for eight years, she saw a dearth of suitable material for them, and commissioned numerous new plays. Now that she's left YPT, her first project is to direct one of those new plays for ATP's first-ever repertory season. She leaves no doubt about what motivated her decision to develop the piece with playwright Michael O'Brien. "We were becoming very concerned about what was happening in Canada with the social safety net being much more in jeopardy," she explains. "The increase in poverty was becoming most visible with women and children, and it was wonderful for us to realize that back in the late 1800s, Charles Dickens had already addressed some of the most important issues that were becoming, again, major issues in today's society." Ardal draws attention to the famous scene in which the young Oliver pleads for more food, pointing out that the boy is punished for his hunger. "He was being blamed for standing up for himself," she argues, "and we're living in a society that actually still believes that, somehow, young people are the cause of an increase in crime - that poor, young street people are the major reason for most of our urban problems." The London of Dickens's novels is not a pretty place, and the play was originally developed for audiences 12 years of age and older, but Ardal doesn't believe in pulling punches when it comes to theatre for young people. "Under 12, yes - you must think about the age of the child and the child's life experience," she concedes. "Children under 10 years old can't be expected to become ironic about the social system. The way they think about the world is different.... But over 12, I think it's really important to give young people the same kind of experience that we are exploring for ourselves as adults." Not that Ardal's vision of the play is an explicit, gory one - on the contrary, she prides herself on a theatrical, metaphoric presentation of Oliver's struggles. "It's not realism," she says firmly. "We use symbolic ways of showing those violent moments. I think that's really important - that we don't do blood and gore, and all of that pseudo-realism, ever." Nonetheless, the production doesn't shy away from the ugly violence that characterizes Dickens's descriptions of the urban poor. "It's so important to show a little child who was so weak that he couldn't even cry when he was born - it's one of the most beautiful parts of the novel," the director says. "And that little child actually is beaten within inches of his life before he's even 10 years old, for asking for more food. How can you pull punches? I'd hate Charles Dickens to not be served.... I often wish that his ghost were standing beside me, so I could say, 'Look, I'm not watering this one down!'" |