In a city as diverse as Toronto, it seems evident that the annual Holocaust Education Week should encourage dialogue between groups affected by genocide. But, as Noah’s Great Rainbow playwright Sam Chaiton understands, building connections between survivors of different traumas can be a difficult first step.
Noah’s Great Rainbow, which portrays two men who lived through Auschwitz and the Rwandan genocide, respectively, originated as a screenplay. (Chaiton is no stranger to writing for film: his tome on Rubin “Hurricane” Carter formed the basis of the 1999 bio-pic starring Denzel Washington.) Chaiton later decided to adapt Noah for the stage, but the story remained in flux over a few years. After a production this spring at the Al Green Theatre, two of the play’s more extraneous characters were cut, as well as much of its musical content.
The latest revisions to the script came last weekend as director Weyni Mengesha (of Soulpepper’s Raisin in the Sun) and dramaturge Nicolas Billion (whose Greenland found success at this year’s Summerworks) led a four-day workshop at Hart House. Finally, on Thursday, Nov. 12—after a final rehearsal that ran right up until showtime—the Great Rainbow Company presented their inaugural reading of the rewritten story.
After fleeing Rwanda, Lion Murigande (Mighty Popo) is hired to work at a Toronto nursing home for Holocaust survivors, including the crotchety Noah Goldblum (Dan Francks). Although fellow nurse Zoey MacLean (Sophia Walker) explains the significance of Nazi Germany to Lion early on, Noah is initially oblivious to—and later dismissive of—the suffering inflicted on Lion as a Tutsi. Both men see themselves as fundamentally alone, relegated to silence, and unable to see the parallels between their stories.
The central characters warm up to one another only gradually, endowing the core of Noah’s Great Rainbow with a believable sense of tension. Popo in particular is a master of timing, while Francks’ consistency makes him riveting to watch. The addition of Noah’s son Phil (Daniel Kash) as a third party to their relationship also effectively raises the stakes: while Chaiton could have limited Phil to merely showing jealousy of Lion’s rapport with Noah, he manages to play out the three-way conflicts in a far more nuanced way.
Clearly, the heart of the play is firmly in place. Its edges, however, still require some trimming. Apart from a rousing chant led by Lion, the story begins uncomfortably slowly: the character of Mrs. Patoka (Jane Spidell, channeling Fran Drescher), and early efforts at comedy and romance feel largely irrelevant to the rest of the story. As well, many allusions to the Holocaust are introduced too explicitly—much of the dialogue surrounding it feels stiffly scripted, and Noah’s inability to speak about anything else gives his character an initial sense of one-dimensionality.
But what of the place of Noah’s Great Rainbow in the context of Holocaust Education Week? When Phil accuses Lion of harming his father, he growls that the nursing home was supposed to be an “institution where survivors could feel safe”—a charge fully dripping in irony. The most poignant moment of the play is a duet between Noah and Lion in which both of them stare at the audience—not each other—lamenting that “this too shall never pass.”
There are so many divides between present discourses on suffering that even the potential for bridges can be hard to spot. But Noah’s Great Rainbow shows that emotional struggle is never unique: it’s perhaps paradoxical, but the surest thing we have in common across cultures and stories can be a sense of isolation. Hopefully, the coming stage production of the play will continue to address the theme with contemplation and poignancy.
