Schoolhouse At 4th Line Theatre
Schoolhouse, a memory play by Leanna Brodie, is getting a spirited revival under the inventive direction of Monica Dottor at the rural – very rural – 4th Line Theatre.
Developed at 4th Line and premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2006, Schoolhouse takes us back to 1938, to SS #1 Jericho School, a one-room schoolhouse in rural Ontario. In hundreds, perhaps thousands of schools like this, kids from eight to the mid-teens were somehow educated at the same time.
Eighteen-year-old Miss Linton (a lissome Alex Pearce) is fresh out of Normal School, with a burning desire to be a teacher. The baptism of fire she receives at the hands of the older kids only stiffens her resolve.
The emotional core of Schoolhouse is Miss Linton’s relationship with and mentoring of Ewart Rokosh (the Brando-esque Alexei DeLuca), a hulking 14-year-old recently released from a “training school” (think borstal).
At Miss Linton’s schoolhouse, the withdrawn Ewart, despite his size, is mocked mercilessly with the kind of cruelty that only children can muster. As directed by Dottor, it is obvious that he has suffered tremendous abuse at that training school.
While it’s never spelled out explicitly it seems fairly obvious that at least one component of that abuse was sexual.
When a boy in a nearby town is beaten senseless, suspicion falls on Ewart. He is exonerated – the culprit was another training school boy – but town sentiment decrees that Ewart be sent away.
I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to reveal that Miss Linton goes to bat for her young charge.
Brodie’s Miss Linton is an idealized heroine who meets every challenge, overcomes every obstacle, forges aimless kids into upstanding citizens, and emerges as the kind of teacher you only see in … well, plays.
As a play Schoolhouse is melodramatic, sentimental, and employs any number of stereotyped characters and timeworn devices. (A mouse in teacher’s desk drawer and a tack on her seat? Haven’t we seen this before?) It is clearly the work of a fledgling playwright.
Since that playwright went on to co-write with Jovanni Sy the brilliant Salesman In China, which premiered at the Stratford Festival in 2024, revisiting her early work is worth the effort.
That’s not the only reason to see Schoolhouse. Brodie is nothing if not sincere and the warts-and-all portrait she paints of not so long ago rural Canada, with its colourful stereotypes and nasty prejudices is positively bracing.
Schoolhouse features characters who voice (supposedly) bygone sexist sentiments that elicit a twitter of amused derision that ripples through the audience. The same was true of Sisters of ’78 and Curveball. The fact that all three plays bear a Blyth Festival imprimatur is no coincidence.
Another thought struck me. One-room schoolhouses lasted into the middle of the last century. It’s fully possible that some of the older members of the audience had spent some of their formative years in schools much like that depicted in Schoolhouse.
What made Schoolhouse especially enjoyable for me was a theatrical setting quite unlike anything I’m used to in New York, or anywhere else on the East Coast for that matter.
The play is presented outdoors, in full daylight (curtain at 6:00pm). The “stage” consists of two barns set at right angles. One has a stone first level and a wooden second floor complete with a balcony that runs its entire length.
The other barn, stage right, is wood that has weathered to an atmospheric grey. Stage left the playing area opens up to the lush meadows and rolling hills of Cavan Monaghan – not the contiguous counties of Ireland but the township in Peterborough County, east of Toronto, in which the 4th Line Theatre is located.
The setting is rife with opportunities and director Dottor takes full advantage. Characters enter from and run off into the meadows. As one point, a vintage Ford pickup truck rolls “onstage” next to the barn.
One of the hallmarks of 4th Line productions is that the cast is seeded with a few professional actors (two in Schoolhouse), some emerging performers on the cusp of a professional career, and a large number of local amateurs. That enables 4th Line to present plays with large casts, something that most theatres can’t afford. The cast of Schoolhouse numbers 27!
Dottor takes advantage of that largess with one of Schoolhouse’s nicest conceits, a group of eight youngsters, all in white, who are identified in the programme as the Ghost Chorus. They emerge from the distant meadows at the beginning and waft silently in and out throughout the play representing all manner of things, some of which I could identify and others that remained tantalizing mysteries.
Most importantly, the Ghost Chorus serves to remind us that Schoolhouse is very much a memory play, that the characters we see represent archetypes who live on in the collective memory of the community.
Dottor doesn’t seem to have let an inch of the expansive territory at her disposal go to waste. She also gives us a number of truly memorable moments. The old Ford, of course, but also a fabulously funny Christmas pageant put on by the students that features a magnificently ghastly rendition of “O Holy Night.”
Set designer Michelle Chesser (who doubles as a cast member) carries the memory theme forward nicely. She has covered the set with what looks like hundreds of books, piles of books, spiralling towers of books, and deconstructed books that turn the back wall into a very hip art gallery. Chelsea Day’s costumes are period perfect.
Interestingly enough, the two Equity professionals in the company take on relatively minor roles, which they fill quite nicely. The two leads, Pearce and DeLuca, seem to be making their last non-professional appearances before they get their Equity card. Both show immense promise and bear watching.
Among the amateurs, Jasper Chesser as Milton, the pint-sized brainiac of Miss Linton’s schoolhouse, was an audience favourite.
Schoolhouse continues at 4th Line Theatre through July 25, 2026. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the 4th Line Theatre website.
Footnote: 4th Line Theatre is located on a farm in Millbrook, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Picnicking is encouraged and they sell charcuterie plates on their website. Modestly priced soft drinks, hot dogs, and hamburgers are also on offer.
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