A brilliantly updated Blast from the Past

Now, here's a thing to do if you are in and around Vancouver and want some delightful entertainment -- and that is to take yourself to the Firehall Theatre and see Tracey Power in Living Shadows. You utterly won't forget it.

OK, so this is a plug. A plug for a former Comox Valley resident and friend, but I wouldn't plug her at all if she and her play weren't amazingly good. The production blew them away at a national level in last year's Fringe Festival, but scheduling precluded a Vancouver performance at that time. Now she's making up for it. So, in pushing this, I am going to offer a reprint of the review I did for a local paper over a year ago. You can take it from there.


By Ian Lidster (Comox Valley Echo and Victoria Times Colonist)

If Tracey Power was weary -- and she confessed in a brief conversation after the show that she was wondering what it would be like to live “normally” for a while – following the final outing of some 75 performances of Living Shadows this season, she certainly didn’t show it when she took her one-woman production to the Old Church Theatre Saturday evening.

Actually, that was her second performance of the day. Demand for tickets was such, and the venue is so limited in space, that she decided to mount a matinee performance Saturday afternoon.

As it was, the chosen theatre was almost ideal for a relatively intimate performance of an aging actress’s agonies of deciding whether or not to relaunch her career after a hiatus of a decade. A decade during which she, Mary Pickford, once ‘America’s Sweetheart’, had largely slipped from public consciousness. Film audiences are not only fickle, they are notably short on memory, and the lady who was born Gladys Marie Smith in Toronto in 1892 knew that only too well.

The premise of Living Shadows is straightforward. In 1950 noted director Billy Wilder was attempting to ‘seduce’ Miss Pickford (then 58) into taking the role of Norma Desmond in his production of Sunset Boulevard. Wilder assumed quite rightly that this story of an aging silent picture actress attempting a comeback was the perfect vehicle for the woman who epitomized silent picture actresses.

As it was, Pickford declined the role that brought her contemporary, Gloria Swanson, back into prominence and a valuable late-in-life career. Power’s objective in penning Living Shadows was to show ‘why’ Pickford pulled back.

In showing the ‘whys’, Power asked the audience to suspend their take on reality and to join Mary in her tale. A tale that went right back to Gladys as a little ‘Hogtown’ girl, and carried her through to Broadway, and then to Hollywood, and ultimately to Pickfair. And they all were there in magnificent array – Doug Fairbanks, DW Griffith, Chaplin and Mary – as Power carried us down through Mary’s years of trials and triumphs.

Single person performances are notably demanding due to the limitations placed on the performer. Such vehicles can appear a bit phony, a bit hokey, and a bit too much to believe. No such pejoratives can be ascribed to Living Shadows, and it is no wonder that Power’s work has gleaned such rave reviews at fringe productions right across the country.

The story in itself is fascinating and holds together consistently. Tracey Power handles the taxing role with much élan, even more so when you consider that she not only offers us Mary, but stylized comments by Fairbanks, Chaplin and Wilder. All of it works; I would be bold enough to say.

One comment following the production suggested that while this individual enjoyed what he saw, he felt he might have gotten a bit more out of it if he had known more of the story ahead of time. I suppose it could be said that an astute knowledge of cinema history and the players therein might have enhanced the experience. But, it also is fair to say that it might have detracted, as well.

Power’s play is an interpretation of events, not necessarily the real goods. She doesn’t pretend to know exactly what went through Pickford’s mind as she agonized over her decision. Nor did she bother getting into Pickford’s ever-increasing reclusiveness or her alcoholism. Instead, Power presented the very human tale of a woman on the horns of a dilemma, as the playwright saw it.

And she saw it clearly. And conveyed it clearly. And deserves thoroughly whatever accolades she has been given. Tracey Power is assuredly an actress/playwright to keep your eyes on. No doubt you will be hearing more of her.