Real-life love/war story on stage
First Métis Man of Odesa will be at Soulpepper Theatre in May 2024.
https://www.soulpepper.ca/ performances/firstmetisman
Punctuate Theatre (production co): https://www.punctuatetheatre.com/
Photos courtesy Alexis McKeown
Source: The Bridge Community News
Author of the Article: Winnie Czulinski
Hearts and flowers are a part of it. But this love story also draws on the deaths and devastated landscapes of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, plus the pandemic that gripped the world with illness and isolation.
Closed doors, cultural differences, desperate measures. A romance, a pregnancy, a wedding. Even the bride’s mother living and touring with the young husband and wife. And much laughter.
The play reflecting this story, through the real-life couple of Métis-Canadian playwright Matthew MacKenzie and Ukrainian actor Mariya Khomutova, has captivated Canada. In 2023, First Métis Man of Odesa, a triple Dora Mavor Moore award-winner, played to appreciative audiences in 96 performances and six cities, with rave reviews.
The married duo, who now live in Cabbagetown, met while MacKenzie was engaged in workshops and theatre research in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2018. English-speaking hired actor Khomutova noted that this accomplished theatre person was “my size and height, often silent, observed a lot, and not out to make an impression.”
