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A20 ARTS O THEGLOBEANDMAIL| SATURDAY,OCTOBER19,
T
he world did not need an-
other Watchmen. Alan
Moore and Dave Gibbons’s
landmark comic-book series has
already been handled and man-
gled by Hollywood, thanks to
Zack Snyder’s 2009 film, an adap-
tation that mistook faithfulness
for purpose, and whose one new
idea (a revamped ending) turned
out to be a colossal error. But no
matter – Watchmen acolytes
could always turn back the
Doomsday Clock to enjoy the
original work, and marvel over
and over again in Moore and Gib-
bons’s gonzo meta-culture fanta-
sy, where superheroes are real,
awful and dangerous.
The original DC comic, which
ran between 1986 and 1987, is
worthy of all hyperbole fans have
bestowed upon it – ambitious
and whip smart in its ability to
distill a generation’s worth of
Cold War paranoia into 12 issues;
fantastical in its imagining of
what our world might look like
had, say, a giant, blue god-of-a-
man named Dr. Manhattan
helped the United States win the
Vietnam War and another
masked vigilante assassinate Bob
Woodward and Carl Bernstein;
and transgressive in its desire to
push the boundaries of the com-
ics medium, to paint a previously
zippy, benign and primary-col-
oured world with such ugly
thematic brushstrokes. No adap-
tations required –Watchmenwas
enough.
So, when the news broke in
2017 that HBO was developing a
Watchmen series with Damon
Lindelof (Lost,The Leftovers), it
was hard to feel, well, much of
anything. So another big-studio
entity would try its hand at ex-
ploiting Moore and Gibbons’s
world, so what? Let them have at
it. But as the series premiere drew
closer, and as HBO began to re-
lease increasingly intriguing trail-
ers and clips, there was a nagging
feeling that this newWatchmen
might be ... something. Trouble?
Insulting? Maybe even the un-
thinkable: good?
Shockingly, this newWatchmen
is not only good, not only great, it
is absolutely necessary. Although
the notoriously cranky Moore has
long ago disavowed any adapta-
tions of his work – you won’t find
his name on Snyder’s movie, nor
anywhere in the HBO produc-
tion’s credits – were he to deign to
ever watch what Lindelof and his
team have accomplished, there’s
strong reason to believe he’d let
loose just a tiny little wry smile.
HBO’sWatchmenis just that in-
sightful, invigorating and essen-
tial.
Sensing the indifference that
Snyder’s adaptation has acquired
since its release, Lindelof made a
smart decision right at the begin-
ning: HisWatchmenwould not be
a retelling. Nor would he go the
second-most obvious route and
adapt the middlingBefore Watch-
menseries of prequel comics that
DC pumped out back in 2012. In-
stead, he would cast his Watch-
men into the future – well, our fu-
ture. Sort of.
Taking place in an alternate
2019, this newWatchmenimag-
ines a world where all the events
of Moore and Gibbons’s comic
took place – including, yes, that
multitentacled psychic-blast of
an ending. But instead of using
the source material to further
mine Moore and Gibbons’s pre-
ferred themes (the toxicity of
nostalgia, the perversion of jus-
tice into fascism), Lindelof tells a
uniquely modern Watchmen sto-
ry – one focused on America’s
original sin of slavery and how ra-
cial hatred has so bled into the
national psyche that the line be-
tween heroes and villains is for-
ever blurred.
Avoiding obvious settings such
as New York, where much of
Moore and Gibbons’s series took
place, Lindelof situates his
Watchmen in Tulsa, Okla. It’s here
where racial tensions are the
highest in the country, thanks to
the lingering pain of the Green-
wood Massacre of 1921 (a real and
somewhat forgotten moment in
American history that Lindelof
delicately resurrects here).Robert Redford is currently
President of the United States
(and entering his 27th year in of-
fice), with his plan of reparations
for black Americans riling up
KKK descendants who call them-
selves the Seventh Kalvary and
have appropriated the masks of
masked, now deceased, vigilante
Rorschach.
That’s not nearly all. The Okla-
homa police fear for their lives
and now wear masks to protect
their identity. Caped crusaders
are hunted by the FBI, there’s no
such thing as the internet or cell-
phones, the super-powered Dr.
Manhattan has left Earth for
Mars, and every now and then ti-
ny little extradimensional alien
squid fall from the sky. Oh, and
Jeremy Irons plays a mystery fig-
ure who spends his days traipsing
around a grand country estate,
eating tomatoes grown on trees
and ordering around an army of
servants who look suspiciously
similar to one another.
If all this sounds like, well, a
lot, that’s because it is. Lindelofrefuses to hold his audience’s
hands as he ventures down some
truly weird narrative paths. It is
dynamic and bold storytelling, al-
though it will be impenetrable for
anyone who hasn’t read Moore
and Gibbons’s original series
(even those who casually re-
member Snyder’s movie might be
lost, especially once Lindelof
starts going deeper into the squid
material). For those who are well-
versed in all thingsWatchmen,
though, the results are outstand-
ing.
What could have been a crass
and easy play at mining intellec-
tual property is given immense
purpose by Lindelof’s wild imag-
ination and supreme storytelling
abilities. Lindelof’s team of writ-
ers, directors, actors and musi-
cians (Trent Reznor and Atticus
Ross provide the show’s thud-
ding, haunting score) play with
big, messy ideas and somehow
come out the other end looking
like tidy geniuses. There’s a con-
ceit used in the sixth episode, for
instance, where Lindelof has one
character (Regina King’s former
Tulsa cop) relive the painful and
history-making memories of her
grandfather. It could have been a
slow-the-story trick that crum-
bles in lesser hands. Yet Lindelof,
no rookie at flashbacks owing to
his time onLost, does something
unexpected and astounding here,
reworking the power of narrative
to suit his own ends.
Binging the six episodes that
HBO provided to critics in ad-
vance of the show’s premiere also
highlighted just how skilled the
network is at premium small-
screen storytelling. The produc-
tion values are high, the cast im-
pressive (in addition to King and
Irons, there are wonderful turns
from Tim Blake Nelson, Jean
Smart, Louis Gossett Jr., James
Wolk and Don Johnson), and the
sheer weight of the thing is im-
mense. As disgustingly fun as
Amazon Prime Video’sThe Boys
can be – it’s that other big super-
heroes-but-dark series of 2019, re-
member? –Watchmenmakes it
look similar to the cruel etchings
of a juice-drunk kindergartner.
Watchmencould, of course, all
fall apart in nine weeks’ time.
(Lindelof has said the series is
meant to be a standalone single
season, but so was HBO’sBig Little
Lies, so who knows.) But as it
stands, Lindelof’s work is one of
the most exciting and ambitious
projects of the year. And for those
who haven’t yet read Moore and
Gibbons’s work ahead of the se-
ries’ Sunday-evening premiere:
there’s no time like the present.WatchmenpremieresOct.20at
p.m.onHBOCanadaandCraveHBO’sWatchmenisexciting,
ambitiousandintenselyweird
2heseriesoffers
auniÄueandodern
adaptationofthe
coicbooksthat
blursthelinebetween
heroesandvillains
BARRY
HERTZ
OPINIONJeanSmart,above,playsSilkSpectreinDamonLindelof’smodern
adaptationofthe1980sgraphicnovelclassicWatchmen.HBO[Damon]Lindelof
refusestoholdhis
audience’shandsashe
venturesdownsome
trulyweirdnarrative
paths.Itisdynamicand
boldstorytelling,
althoughitwillbe
impenetrable
foranyonewhohasn’t
read[Alan]Mooreand
[Dave]Gibbons’s
originalseries.L
adies and gentlemen! Non-binary and two-spirit! May
I present to you the amazing true story of Almighty
Voice, Cree outlaw and folk hero, and his ride-or-die
wife, the fierce White Girl!
Sorry, I seem to have been infected by the vaudeville hoo-
pla of Daniel David Moses’sAlmighty Voice and His Wife.Or,
more accurately, the vaudeville hoopla of its second act. Mo-
ses’s 1990s play is, notoriously, a two-sided one, its first part
being a lyrical love story, the second, a raucous satire.
Both sides get a powerful treatment in Soulpepper’s land-
mark production – the first time the company has staged a
work by an Indigenous Canadian playwright. Directed with fi-
nesse by Jani Lauzon and performed with great spirit and
charm by Michaela Washburn and James Dallas Smith, it fully
discloses the play’s beauty and its audacity. Moses’s script is
based on the murky real-life events surrounding Kisse-Mani-
tou-Wayou, or Almighty Voice, a legendary Cree warrior in
1890s Saskatchewan who was jailed for unlawfully killing live-
stock, then escaped and shot a North-West Mounted Police of-
ficer who tried to recapture him. After a long and violent man-
hunt, he and two fellow warriors were finally taken down by
cannon fire in a standoff.
In Act 1, titled Running with the Moon, Moses reshapes
these events as a romance. Almighty Voice (Smith) woos
White Girl (Washburn), a young woman who earned her nick-
name from a stint in residential school. The buffalo being
nearly extinct, Almighty Voice instead slaughters a cow for
their wedding feast, leading to his arrest. After his jailbreak,
he and White Girl go on the run. It’s a tender tale of love grow-
ing through adversity, by turns funny, sexy and moving, a sort
of First NationsBonnie and Clyde, with poetic passages and an
elegant nine-scene structure echoing the phases of the moon.
At the same time, Moses skilfully fills in the historical back-
drop – the dire years of near-starvation and government op-
pression following the collapse of the North-West Rebellion –
and, through the tortured memories of White Girl, reveals the
damage already being caused by the residential schools.
Moses’s jarring Act 2 – Ghost Dance – is a satire of old-time
racist entertainment predating the likes of Spike Lee’sBam-
boozled.The dead Almighty Voice, now the Ghost, finds him-
self in a kind of lime-lit hell – a parody of one of those Wild
West vaudeville shows that perpetuated the stereotype of the
“red Indian.” There, he’s goaded by a crude, wisecracking em-
cee, the Interlocutor (played by White Girl in whiteface). As
the Ghost is put through his paces, singing, dancing and mug-
ging, Moses heaps on every Indigenous cliché imaginable,
from the relatively benign to the increasingly hateful, all de-
livered via a stream of bad puns, worse shtick and – in this pro-
duction – goofy cartoon sound effects. If it gets to be too much
at times, ultimately Moses’s descent into offensive racist ex-
cess has an emetic effect, purging the demons of white Eu-
ropean colonialism.
Smith and Washburn have a delightful romantic chemistry
in the first act. Washburn is especially impressive, conveying
White Girl’s vaunted ferocity in her emotional attacks against
the white Christian god and his “bad medicine.” She trans-
mutes that emotion into aggressive comedy until it’s finally
unleashed again at the play’s climax. Seductive, shocking, ca-
thartic, this is a show worth the hoopla.AlmightyVoiceandHisWifecontinuestoNov.10.(soulpepper.ca)SpecialtoTheGlobeandMailAlmightyVoiceandHisWife
wedslovestorywithsatire
MARTINMORROWTHEATREREVIEWAlmightyVoiceandHisWife
SOULPEPPERTHEATRE,TORONTOWrittenbyDanielDavidMoses
DirectedbyJaniLauzon
StarringJamesDallasSmithandMichaelaWashburn
★★★½P
rize-winning writer and educator Charlie Foran will be
the new executive director of the Writers’ Trust of
Canada, one of the country’s foremost literary orga-
nizations.
The author of 11 books of fiction and non-fiction and win-
ner of a Governor-General’s Award, Foran was previously
chief executive of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship,
which was founded by the Right Honourable Adrienne
Clarkson and John Ralston Saul.
“Charlie is that rare hybrid – both a respected administra-
tor with experience leading some of the country’s most im-
pactful arts and social-justice organizations, and an accom-
plished writer working in both fiction and non-fiction,” Writ-
ers’ Trust chair Kari Cullen said.
Established in 1976 by Margaret Atwood, Graeme Gibson,
Margaret Laurence, Pierre Berton and David Young, the char-
ity provides financial support for writers at various stages of
their careers and oversees some of this country’s biggest liter-
ary awards, including the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.CharlieForannamed
executivedirectorof
Writers’TrustofCanada
STAFF