No whistling past this ever-growing graveyard

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This article was published 01/03/2024 (870 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In the graveyard, covered in dirt, sweat and dust, the evidence of a hard day’s work, Abdul (Chance Jones) is exhausted, lying in a bed of his own labour, seeking a few moments of rest before some body arrives to trade places with him for the rest of eternity.

Abdul is a reluctant servant with no balance between his work and his life, catching his winks in a doorless shed adjacent to the burial plots to which he and Solomon (Christian Paul) tend in an infection-ravaged community in Sierra Leone.

As he rests in a soon-to-be-occupied grave, odd sounds begin to spring forth from Abdul; one can’t be sure whether he’s laughing or crying.

Throughout Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s epiphanous, generous and ultimately restorative Diggers (90 minutes, no intermission), audience members will be compelled to do both. A plot-driven comedy shrouded in tragic circumstance, Diggers examines the lengths to which its characters must go to retain their humanity, even as they deal with societal despair and plumb the depths of grief.

Directed with finesse and a willingness to engage in the unexpected by Pulga Muchochoma, Diggers also acts as a critique of the concept of heroism.

Played with an undercurrent of anger, Abdul closes himself off from the possibility of hope, preferring not to allow himself to imagine a future other than this one.

Solomon — portrayed by a wonderfully liquid Paul as a wise Everyman — hasn’t forgotten life’s simple delights, forcing himself to create his own diversions.

The two men have settled into their routine — dig, fill, dig, fill, dig, fill — so completely that when two rather small white bags arrive at the cemetery, they treat the grotesque facts about death with a matter-of-factness typically expected of the heartless.

“Two is not so bad,” Abdul says. The work, they understand, must be done.

Then the third man arrives. Bai (Jahlani Gilbert-Knorren) is Solomon’s nephew, a jubilant, strong and relatively immature man, unaware of the sacrifices awaiting him.

Though his character is the most explosive by far, Gilbert-Knorren’s interior development is St. Bernard’s most subtle concoction. Beneath Bai’s surface lurks a soul at a loss for words, in search of control in a world where none is possible.

Though isolated from the general public as a means of protection, the three men are routinely visited by Sheila (Warona Setshwaelo, comforting and sharp), a member of the town council who serves as their only link to the community. Delivering pineapple cake and molumbo fruit, Sheila is a stand-in for the sweet and the familiar. But those small reminders of domestic life are all Abdul, Solomon and Bai ever receive.

The set, designed by Courtney Moses, is a yard enclosed by the jagged teeth of a picket fence and decorated by the expected materials of a worksite — Thermoses, toolboxes and a large, yellow excavator, its neck craned downward like a swan. Working in tandem with the physical setting is the well-conceived soundscape of Elena Stoodley, who punctuates the action with birdsong, ringing bells and the flush of early morning rain.

But while its overt themes are dark and grim, Diggers is a brilliantly stratified production, on its surface a painful allegory of labour and at its core a riotous workplace comedy. Solomon is the foreman, Abdul his right-hand man and Bai the unwitting protegé with untapped potential. They’re understaffed and overworked. Benefits? They’re lucky if they get a raincoat.

While at work, two of the men dream of elsewhere. Solomon’s imagination manifests a graveyard dog, an invisible companion with whom he plays fetch and goes on daily walks. It’s a touching and heart-rending character note by St. Bernard, animated by Paul’s commitment, which contains fascinating ambiguity. Did he ever really have a dog? How long has this friend kept him company?

Bai’s dreaming is at first a bit less clear, but in the end, no less powerful. When he first carries out on stage a model of a town made from scraps of worksite material, there are questions about when he had time to do it and why. But the purpose reveals itself in a brilliant bit of meta-set design: Bai is building the community he can no longer see, the streets he used to walk in a handheld memory palace, striving to recreate his former existence so as to not forget himself.

Over there is the mosque, and over there is the market, a stone’s throw from the town square, where in real life, the bodies are piling up. Abdul has a problem with Bai’s stubborn optimism. “That boy’s got a right to keep on living,” Solomon says. “No,” replies Abdul. “He don’t.”

By limiting the audience’s exposure to the outside world to the aural, the described and the imagined, St. Bernard and Muchochoma heighten the action through sensory omission, urging the audience to imagine the suffering and the courage on the other side of the graveyard wall.

What’s unseen is undeniable and what is shown is magnetic.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com