If comfort food for 4th Line Theatre’s soul is a thing, The Cavan Blazers continues to nourish in a remarkable and significant way.
Written by founder Robert Winslow well before the Millbrook outdoor theatre company had a name, what has become 4th Line’s flagship production has been staged six times since 1992, the most recent staging being 12 years ago.
Now, as 4th Line’s 31st season continues, The Cavan Blazers returns from August 1 to 26, chronicling the 19th-century conflict between Cavan Township’s Protestant and Catholic Irish settlers.
To say that battle was a nasty dispute between two opposing factions would be an understatement. Sprinkle in hate-fuelled violence and you get the idea. Threatened by the fledgling establishment of a Catholic settlement, the eponymous Cavan Blazers — a Protestant vigilant gang wholly committed to preventing it — went to war against its proponents.
Years after he wrote the script, Winslow says The Cavan Blazers has well withstood the test of time while holding down a special place in his heart.
“It got us on the map right off the bat,” Winslow reflects during a media day event held Wednesday (July 19) at the scenic Winslow Farm, home of 4th Line Theatre off Zion Line (formerly 4th Line) near Millbrook.
“It created the (4th Line) mandate,” Winslow adds. “It created the standard that we’ve followed ever since. If you’re going to write a play for 4th Line, you’ve got to do a certain amount of research. You maybe should try to find a local connection. All the different elements that make 4th Line unique were in that first play.”
Speaking to the seventh coming of The Cavan Blazers, Winslow says the play’s message remains relevant in a world where conflict is, on varying levels, is rampant and very much in the news.
“At the end of the play, when Dane Swain says to Patrick McGuire ‘We should have talked,’ the audience goes ‘Yes, you should have talked’ and then sort of laughs,” says Winslow, who is reprising his role as Justice John Knowlsen.
“It’s an interesting point that maybe when there’s conflict between individuals, groups, nations, whatever, a dialogue would probably de-escalate things or help find the way to a solution,” Winslow says.
While the play deals with a serious historical conflict, there’s a reason why it remains one of 4th Line’s most popular productions.
“The play actually has a lot of humour in it, a lot of lightheartedness, so it’s entertaining,” Winslow notes. “But the message, I think, is still significant.”
4th Line Theatre managing artistic director Kim Blackwell has an equally long and cherished attachment to The Cavan Blazers. She first directed the production for its 2004 remount and is back in that capacity.
“I directed it 19 years ago, which is a generation — my daughter was two years away from being born — so it is strange but interesting to have a 30-year relationship with one play,” says Blackwell, who also served as assistant stage manager for the play’s first staging.
“It’s light on women’s stories but that’s why you pair it with something like The Tilco Strike (4th Line’s current production on until July 22) which has much more of a women’s focus. But it is what it is and I really do honour what it is.”
Blackwell agrees with Winslow’s assessment of the play’s takeaway for audiences.
“It’s a very prescient play in terms of what’s going with Ukraine and Russia, or thinking about Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland or Rwanda. Places where people who live next door to each other turn on each other — neighbours who look exactly the same.”
“In Belfast, during the troubles, there were walls between streets of people. By virtue of being Catholic or Protestant, it made you the enemy. When designing the set for this (staging), I really delved into the murals and graffiti of Northern Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s. You’re going to see a lot of that represented on the stage.”
“I don’t want anyone to think of it as museum piece. I’ve being saying, just jokingly ‘It’s not your grandmother’s Cavan Blazers.'”
Delighted to be back at the farm is JD ‘Jack’ Nicholsen. He portrays Patrick Maguire, who “has this dream of building a Catholic church in Cavan” where Protestants rule the religious roost.
“Unfortunately, he only has 27 Catholics in his community and there are well over 100 Protestants, so he’s a little outnumbered,” Nicholsen points out. “I love the complexity of playing somebody who has an altruistic dream. He’s doing this for his people and for the love of his family and all of his history.”
“At the same time, he’s putting a lot of people in grave danger. He has incensed the Cavan Blazers who are hell bent on removing all Catholics from the community. At the time the play takes place, they had been at it for more than 200 years.”
While Nicholsen has not portrayed Maguire before, he acted in Maja Ardal’s Wishful Seeing at 4th Line last summer and, overall, has appeared in five productions at the Winslow Farm.
“The audience here is a very different than at an indoor theatre,” assesses Nicholsen, who acting career spans more than 30 years. “They’re allowed to vocalize a bit more. They’re a little but more laid back. They’re allowed to get a little bit more involved.”
“The energy off of them is extraordinary. When I was doing Carmel (staged in 2019 and the third play by Robert Winslow and Ian McLachlan about the Barnardo children), I played a bad guy. By the end of the show, they were hissing and booing me. They really hated me and I was like ‘Yes!'”
VIDEO: JD ‘Jack’ Nicholsen and Katherine Cullen perform a scene from “The Cavan Blazers”
Winslow, meanwhile, is excited about this restaging of the play that inaugurated 4th Line Theatre all those years ago, but terms his excitement as being “different” this time around.
“I don’t think you can duplicate the original thing. We had no idea how it would be received. Would people come? Would they not come? Would they hate it? Would they love it? Would it alienate the community or would they accept it? It was exciting in that way, but it was unique.”
For her part, Blackwell says there’s no added pressure to do right by what amounts to Winslow’s ‘baby.’ Rather, she says, “I treat it with the right amount of reverence and acknowledge the fact that I really like the play.”
“It’s a fascinating story. It’s a story with lots of echoes, so it doesn’t take a lot for me to give it its due. If the audiences come in droves, then we’ll know that the recipe is still there.”
Sponsored by Miskin Law, The Cavan Blazers also stars Katherine Cullen, Colin A. Doyle, Thomas Fournier, Matt Gilbert, Justin Hiscox, Mark Hiscox, Ken Houston, Robert Morrison, Kelsey Powell and Julia Scaringi, among others.
Behind the scenes, musical direction is by Justin Hiscox, with choreography by Rachel Bemrose, costume design by Korin Cormier, fight direction by Edward Belanger, sound design by Esther Vincent, and design by Blackwell — a role she also filled for the 2004 production.
Tickets are $50 ($45 for children and youth ages five to 16), with $38 tickets available for preview nights.
You can order tickets by visiting www.4thlinetheatre.on.ca, calling 705-732-4445 (toll free at 1-800-814-0055), emailing boxoffice@4thlinetheatre.on.ca, or in person at 4th Line Theatre’s box office at 9 Tupper Street in Millbrook.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of 4th Line Theatre’s 31st season.
