Review | ‘The Waltz’ at Factory Theatre is a sweet romance with substance

A sweet romance sparks under the glorious Saskatchewan sky.

You could sum up Marie Beath Badian’s world premiere play with this simple description and you’d not be wrong. But the substance of the piece comes in the details about the characters, their situation and, in particular, their backgrounds and backstories.

Romeo Junior Alvarez (Anthony Perpuse) is straight outta Scarborough, driving cross-country to start his first year at the University of British Columbia. He’s handsome, confident and, because the play is set in the ’90s, sporting a dated centre-part haircut. Bea Klassen (Ericka Leobrera) is a couple of years younger and from the rural area where the play takes place. She is quieter, suspicious and going through a semi-goth phase.

What brings these young people together is that they’re both second-generation Filipino-Canadian. Through the play, Badian demonstrates how immigrant experiences can be very different while at the same time linked through language, custom and connection to homeland.

The characters also have more direct ties: the play is the third in a series, the first of which — the charming farce “Prairie Nurse” — told the story of Junior’s and Bea’s mothers, nurses from the Philippines who came to work in Saskatchewan in the 1960s. There are lots of Easter eggs in “The Waltz” for those who saw the previous play, which premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2013 and played at Factory Theatre in 2018. The house where the action takes place is owned by the doctor at the clinic where the nurses first worked. And we hear about the clinic’s kindly caretaker Charlie, too.

Most important to this play is how the nurses’ lives diverged and how this shaped their kids’ experiences. Bea’s mother, Puring, married the local hockey star she met in “Prairie Nurse” and stayed put in this location where her daughter feels isolated and stigmatized as a person of colour. Junior’s mum, Penny, sponsored her Filipino boyfriend to emigrate and settled with him in Scarborough, where Junior mingles with peers from myriad backgrounds and is immersed in Filipino culture.

The flirty banter between the young duo goes to the next level when Bea reveals she’s been to the Philippines, which gave her access to aspects of their shared background that Junior is eager to hear about. The details they reveal about their lives fill out their characters in satisfying ways: why he’s such an overachiever and people-pleaser; why she’s so disenfranchised.

This is, on the one hand, a slight scenario for a drama; there’s no looming peril or dark secret waiting to be revealed. But what’s happening to the characters is, of course, hugely important to them: life changes; budding romantic and sexual attraction; the potential of connection and of rejection.

At 70 minutes long, Badian’s text is rightsized for the material, and director Nina Lee Aquino’s production is pitched at the perfect pace and tone for this rom-com-with-substance. The chemistry between Perpuse and Leobrera is superbly credible and their charming performances anchor the show.

The staging, produced by Factory Theatre in partnership with the Blyth Festival, looks beautiful. Jackie Chau’s set of a big deck with wooden pillars gives the actors an expansive and varied playing area. Michelle Ramsay’s rich lighting complements the text as the story moves from an afternoon wash of light into angular early evening rays.

Play and production nod to David French’s “Salt-Water Moon,” another romantic two-hander set in a particular era and regional locale (in that instance, 1920s Newfoundland) that has become a Canadian classic.

One intriguing aspect of Chau’s design — various items including vials of bright-blue liquid placed under glass containers on the outskirts of the stage — may be a nod to Ravi Jain’s production of “Salt-Water Moon” in this same theatre in 2016, which had tea lights similarly placed on the floor. That production, staged when Aquino was Factory’s artistic director, marked a turning point for Canadian theatre in Jain’s reframing of a canonical play to offer actors of colour a place within it.

Badian’s play and Aquino’s production add to that intervention, riffing again on a familiar scenario and filling it with well-observed, culturally specific material.

For the record, I didn’t recognize the items under the glass containers and I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to. They read to me as references to Filipino culture that will resonate with viewers to whom they are familiar. The production introduced other aspects of Filipino experience to me, such as the tradition of lavish debut parties for 18-year-olds, which provide Junior one of his income streams and which open up a device late in the play to finally bring Junior and Bea closer together and justify the play’s title.

References to ’90s culture are milked for their comic value, such as Junior’s struggling with an actual physical map and busting out a massive folder of CDs to put in his even more massive boombox. This adds another level of nostalgia to a play and production that toy with, but never slip fully, into sentimentality. And given that there’s even a “Sound of Music” reference, that’s no small feat.

Badian’s now working on the final play in this cycle, called “The Cottage Guest” and commissioned by the Blyth Festival. I’m looking forward to seeing what genre she takes on next and how the stories of these families evolve.

The Waltz

By Marie Beath Badian, directed by Nina Lee Aquino. At Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst St., through Nov. 13. Factorytheatre.ca or 416-504-9971

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