Fall On Your Knees at Canadian Stage
Photo by Dahlia Katz
I. TUNE
James Piper tunes pianos. Before his mother died and left him orphaned at 15, she taught him “to expect something finer in spite of everything”. He tunes to support himself in preparation for that something finer.
In Sydney, the Cape Breton coal town where he lives, he works hard. He checks his progress on a piano by playing the first four bars of “Moonlight Sonata”. Never more. He is tuning, not playing; preparing, not living. Though he buys a box of classic books to enrich his mind, they remain unread.
He has children with first-generation Lebanese-Canadian Materia Mahmoud, who is an adolescent. He passes the buck of preparation onto them, and tunes them carefully, so they are ready to meet his conceptions of success. James’s father got angry when James spoke Gaelic with his mother, and James continues this family tradition when Materia speaks Arabic: “I don’t want [the children] growing up confused. Speak English.”
Materia earns extra money by playing piano at small venues around Sydney. The one time she plays at home, James stops her: there’s a note out of tune.
II. PRACTICE
Kathleen, the eldest Piper daughter, has the voice of an angel. It emerges explosively, spurring James into action. He rounds up piles of sheet music and decides that Kathleen will one day sing at the Metropolitan Opera. She will move past the tuning phase. She will practice until she is a star.
Flash forward a few years. Kathleen is studying in New York with legendary vocal coach Kaiser. His first response to her voice? “We have a lot of work to do.” He leads her in hardcore operatic voice studies. Daily. For the first few weeks, she is only allowed to do breathing exercises; then, only allowed to sing scales; then, only allowed to sing the proscribed, soprano-range arias. “Practice, practice, practice,” commands Kaiser.
Back in time. Two more daughters: Mercedes and Frances. James dotes on them less. The closest he gets to fathering is teaching them poems. World War One begins, and he jumps at the opportunity to escape his disastrous marriage.
Mercedes practices. She studies the Bible and becomes a teacher. “Ave Maria”, at the piano, over and over, until she dies.
III. PLAY
Frances. Frances. Frances. Never one to be kept down. Never one to practice.
She walks into a Sydney speakeasy and becomes a cabaret artist on the spot. It’s her father’s booze the men are drinking as they hoot and hiss. They’re feral for her.
In Harlem, Kathleen finds jazz, women, and jazz women. Jazz’s contrast to the mathematical precision of opera thrills her. It’s the time signatures — they “slip and slide around imperceptibly.” Finally, something unexpected. Something present tense.
IV. PLAY
Fall On Your Knees has been in the works for almost a decade, says Canadian Stage artistic director Brendan Healy on opening night.
They’ve tuned. They’ve practiced. Now: a play.
Camellia Koo’s set of wooden piano strings stretches to the ceiling of the Bluma Appel. Theatrical haze nestles the strings, combining with Leigh Ann Vardy’s lighting to create a fractured cloud of frosty Cape Breton fog. Ghosts haunt the air.
It’s a straightforward adaptation that preserves as much of the novel as it can. Ann-Marie MacDonald has been dreaming this play for 30 years, and it starts now: an ode to the splintered-ness of Canadian identity; a story the size of our frigid tundra; a mass for dreams, families, and corpses buried under scarecrows. In present tense.