Channeling vacation and domestic vengeance

With winter around the corner, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre is revisiting a sprawling summer resort town this weekend with three staged readings of The Right Road to Pontypool.

Written by Alex Poch-Goldin and first produced in 2009, The Right Road to Pontypool covers a century of seasons in a town that became known as a warm-weather oasis for Jewish families from nearby Toronto in search of relaxing respite from the sweltering heat in the big city.

At a time when some beaches and pools had “no Jews allowed” restrictions, Pontypool — like a less-affluent version of the Catskills resorts in upstate New York — saw its population increase eightfold every summer weekend at its peak.

“Suddenly, this sleepy little town of 300 Protestants would have 2,500 Jews from Kensington Market and the Spadina area,” says Poch-Goldin, WJT’s playwright in residence, who this year completed for the company a draft of a play called Edenbridge, about Jewish immigrant colonies in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, as well as one for Intrepid, about famed local spymaster Sir William Stephenson, for Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre.

Poch-Goldin, who directed RMTC’s current run of Caryl Churchill’s A Number, grew up in Montreal, where, in his parents’ generation, a similar summertime story for Jewish immigrants played out in the Ste. Agathe-des-Monts area. He was inspired to write about Pontypool after receiving a commission from Millbrook, Ont.’s 4th Line Theatre, a company that produces plays about the region.

Upon learning about Pontypool’s legacy from writer Grant Curtis’s book Laugh, and the World Laughs With You, the playwright began research, visiting the town and meeting with Doris Manetta, the granddaughter of Moishe Yukle Bernstein, a Polish immigrant who initiated the Pontypool boom in 1916 by inviting Torontonians to his home, inspiring a cottage industry that boosted the town’s economy throughout most of the 20th century.

Called “absolutely unforgettable” by the Globe and Mail, Pontypool featured 75 characters, including Bernstein, Manetta and Louis Weingarten, better known as Johnny Wayne of the legendary duo Wayne and Shuster. Dov Mickelson, who recently appeared in MTC’s Indecent, originated the role of Moishe in Millbrook.

Mickelson returns as Bernstein for this weekend’s readings, performing alongside a cast that includes Harry Nelken, Orit Shimoni, Sharon Bajer, Ross McMillan, Debbie Maslowsky, Poch-Goldin and more.

The readings at the Berney Theatre are scheduled for tonight and Sunday at 8 p.m., with a matinée reading on Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets ($17) are available at wjt.ca.

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Across town at St. Boniface’s Théâtre Cercle Molière, the company’s landmark 100th season continues this month with Bonnes Bonnes, a reimagining of playwright Jean Genet’s 1947 work Les Bonnes (The Maids).

In playwrights Tamara Nguyen and Sophie Gee’s treatment, Sophie, Meilie and Charo — three Chinese women — come together to make chili sauce and to watch a video adaptation Sophie made of the classic play.

According to the producers behind the show, Nervous Hunter, in this version, the two maids who plot revenge on their madame are Chinese, which inspires the women to speak candidly about their own identities as well as the “wounds of internalized racism.”

“And yes — they raise a big, unapologetic middle finger to everyone who ever made fun of how their school lunches smelled,” TCM’s show description says. A combination of documentary theatre, revisionist theatre, movement and live cooking, Bonnes Bonnes was first produced in 2023 at Théâtre Aux Écuries in Montreal.

Directed by Gee, the play runs in French, with English subtitles available, at TCM to Nov. 29. On Nov. 27, audiences are invited to stay after the show for a Meet the Artists program, with the opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the behind-the-scenes work that went into the play’s development.

Tickets ($15 accessible, $30 for seniors and students, $40 standard) are available at cerclemoliere.com.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca