“Thimblerig” by Alf Silver

The aging generation of the sixties is, perhaps more than any other, unequivocal in its nostalgia. The current sentiment goes something like this: “Sure, we were a bit naive, but our openness to the world and our recognition of the world’s ‘hypocrisy’ are important legacies. Our clamour for ‘liberation’ mattered”. For the sake of perspective you may believe a corrective necessary to all this. The play, Thimblerig, by Alfred Silver, set in Winnipeg during a crucial six month period in 1972-73, was probably not written as a “corrective” and it is certainly not striving for sociological “significance”. Instead, this highly effective melodrama can stand as a sober, unsentimental look at several typical citizens from this generation now so eloquent in its own defence.

Silver doesn’t set out in didactic fashion to explode the nostalgia. It is simply that his characters know more about self-gratification than liberation, more about rudeness than openness. Also, their naivete is dangerous, not merely coy or inconvenient. Silver quietly lets these people who represent one set of contemporary archetypes speak for themselves. That’s easy for them to do since they have no reference beyond themselves and their narrow, urban world of dark apartments, small shops, and dreary neighbourhood restaurants.

Though any urban setting could hold this play, the city is unmistakably Winnipeg. I would be hard pressed to say exactly why. Obviously, it isn’t just the familiar place names. Rather, what strikes me as correct is Silver’s immediate, unlaboured rendering of the city’s amorphous, somewhat decayed ambience, as reflected in the people and their space.

The play’s structure is improvisational and loose in feeling, and episodic in form. His use of songs as “soliloquies” for the characters comes out of rock opera and is related to its distant antecedent, opera seria, in which formal motivations are sung while the story proceeds in recitative. While I don’t think his lyrics stand up to close scrutiny, they are at least workable and I’ll grant their effect is better in performance than on the printed page. In any case, they help to provide the distance — a repose — that I believe is necessary to appreciate the action he chooses to show. Just as important in keeping interested distance are Silver’s decisions as to the content of each episode.

While the play could be tighter, I think the playwright has done an admirable job of keeping a script filled with the machinery of old melodrama (a sixties-flavoured variation of a favourite old Hollywood theme about a cad’s comeuppance) from exploding in all directions. This control is evident in performance, to be sure, but is even more noticeable when one studies the text. He does this by not showing characters making crucial choices on stage and by keeping all the sensational action offstage, while each scene casually lets us see the heart of the matter. We are able to measure the physical and emotional results of decisions made and acts committed.

I think Silver shrewdly realized, unlike those who spout the nostalgia, that many of the sixties people chose to live a melodramatic existence as an illusory escape from a complex, adult world. That choice proved to be debilitating to them. Clearly, Silver hoped to create a sharp parable about his generation and he doesn’t entirely succeed. The play remains a melodrama in which only the protagonist con man has any real complexity. The others, though vividly presented, move in his orbit However, Silver’s manipulation of the ostensible plot (the financial and personal downfall of Blackjack Thomas, cool sixties con man) against the real story (of Blackjack’s equivocal struggle for emotional growth) is very effective. It is, in fact, what makes Thimblerig important as a play. The traditional tale has the cad realize that the stable life, which he thought only for suckers, represents something better than what he has. He fails as a cad but is potentially redeemed in society’s eyes through some noble act. Silver shakes the old story up. The crux is this: because it is so self-absorbed, the sixties society is hardly the best example the cad can follow in realizing a mature life. Blackjack, rather, moves away from his society towards a perception of something beyond it, and more important, beyond himself. He becomes absorbed in the complexity of life while the other characters in the play rush to play new parts without any recognition that they are to blame for the failure of the old ones. Although extremely tentative, we do see Blackjack refusing to play the “melodrama” of his generation any longer at the end of the play.

His “redemption” is in his own eyes. The catalyst is a sense of guilt — his outrage at seeing his innocent ex-wife get hurt in one of his schemes — but the final push towards a new life is his inability to commit revenge. He concludes, and perhaps it is only an illusion which will disappear, that simple motivations can’t work. Silver’s point is clear. It isn’t for the cad to move towards the society; rather, society must try out what he has discovered even if it proves to be nothing more positive than a less destructive illusion.

Whatever they may feel about the story, I suspect audiences will respond to the language of these characters. To my ear the talk is instinctively authentic and tinged with a bitter, comic edge. In his ability to conjure up such highly individualistic talk, Silver shows his affinity with two other chroniclers of the sixties generation: Tom Walmsley and Michael Weller. Even at this early stage in his career, he is able to match them in creating a mood piece in words, though he clearly isn’t as compelling as they are at their best. However, I’m willing to bet Silver will match and will be in great contrast to them. Both these writers share a kind of stern romanticism for their generation. They are too intelligent to be uncritical but they are also ultimately forgiving and accepting. This approximates the nostalgia Silver freezes against. They optimistically stand with their age; Silver refuses to offer cheer.

A last note. Last winter Thimblerig became the first play by a local playwright to be produced by the Manitoba Theatre Centre in 15 years. Its success, its very presentation, marked it as a precursor for the continued appearance of local plays including, one hopes, more of Silver’s work. The publication in play form marks Silver as the first “regional” playwright (in English) from Winnipeg in years. There could be no better example. For whatever reservations one may have about Thimblerig itself, there can be no doubt about Alf Silver’s talent to create theatre which speaks immediately, if sometimes harshly, to its audience.

Rory Runnells is a Winnipeg freelance writer and reviewer.