THE AQUINIAN
Jake’s Gift will be at the Playhouse for just Wednesday Oct. 14th at 8pm as its tour across the East Coast continues.
The play has two characters. There is Jake, a uniformed eighty-year old World War 2 Veteran and Isabelle, a ten year old French child who challenges him to revisit his past.
The kicker is that they’re both played by the same person: she’s Julia Mackey, the playwright.
Mackey travelled to Normandy for the 60th anniversary of D-Day to create this story in 2004. Thousands of British, French, and Canadian soldiers were gathered to remember. Through their experience and her interest, she created the play. It further develops Jake, who is from an earlier play that she made as part of a character workshop.
Mackey has created Jake’s return to Juno Beach. He has reluctantly come to find the grave of his brother whose resting place was never found. There he encounters ten year old Isabelle, who takes him on a few adventures. Through her, Jake is eventually able to find joy again.
This play promises to be a unique experience. The playwright will be playing the same sort of characters she had seen firsthand in France. There will be an interesting transformation on stage, as she goes from Jake who is hunched over and stiff, to Isabelle is peppy, and keeps questioning him on what it means to be Canadian.
The play has won Best Drama, Best Female Performer, and Best Solo Show at the Victoria Fringe Festival. In Edmonton it won Best of Fest. Mackey was nominated at the Vancouver Theatre Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Lead Role- Small Theatre Category for her part in Jake’s Gift.
Kate Nicholson of the Winnipeg Review called it “the most theatrically pure show I’ve ever seen”.
With it being critically acclaimed, having historical value, and being unique with the playwright herself playing the characters, it’s definitely not a play you want to miss.
