Matchmaker at Firehall

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Elise Fortin wants to become filthy rich. A determined woman, she hires matchmaker Martha Boisvert to help her reach her goal. And she does, indeed, become very wealthy, according to the description of The Matchmaker of Montréal. But at what cost?

“At a reception in a funeral home, I overheard one woman tell another that funerals are a good place to meet men. I wove these threads into a play about women in Montreal, where I was living at the time,” explains writer and producer Shaul Ezer in the Playwright’s Notes about this romantic comedy, which opens at the Firehall Arts Centre May 23. “For a change, however, this play is not about women as victims, but about those who have taken charge of their own destiny in order to reach their goals. Two such women in the play are Martha and Elise – the first a woman of integrity, while the other somewhat unprincipled. In unexpected ways, both achieve their goals, but one ultimately loses control over the thing she covets most.”

The Matchmaker of Montréal is the first of a trilogy of romantic comedies by Ezer, whose life story would make a fascinating play or book.

“My family is Iraqi Jewish from Basra, Iraq,” he shared with the Independent in an e-mail interview. “My father moved us across the Shatt-al-Arab to Abadan, Iran, where I was born. When I was a child, he moved us to Tehran, where I grew up in a Jewish home speaking Arabic, in a Muslim country speaking Farsi, but I and my siblings were sent to an American Presbyterian missionary school to learn English. (This diversity was to serve me well later in the many multicultural societies of Canada.) My father considered it vital to educate his children in English, because of his simple view of the world before WWII: the English ruled the world and Iran had no future, so learning English was a ticket to attend university and find a career in an English-speaking country.

“After graduating from high school,” continued Ezer, “I worked in Tehran for one year to save for university, and then came to Canada on a student visa. Except for the first year at the University of New Brunswick, where I did very well, I was able to finance my education in Canada through scholarships from the University of Toronto. After graduate work in chemistry, I studied law and, for most of my career, I was a corporate lawyer in Toronto. With my first wife and two sons, we were members of the Beth Tzedec Congregation.

“I retired in 2000, and spent some time living in Montreal with my second wife, Monique, also a corporate lawyer. Two years ago, she was promoted to the position of chief legal officer of Telus, based in Vancouver, which is why we moved here.”

Ezer’s prior writing includes a nonfiction law publication, published in 1985, and an historical novel, which came out in 2008.

“Writing must be in my genes,” he said when asked about the transition from law to writing as a profession. “In high school, I was editor of the school paper and the yearbook. As a graduate student in chemistry, I wrote scientific papers. Later, as a law student, I worked as a proofreader for the Globe and Mail and editor of a trade publication, Meetings Canada. While practising law, I wrote a law book: International Exporting Agreement (Lexis Nexis, New York).

“For a long time,” he added about his novel, “I was intrigued by Chapter 12 of Numbers in the Torah, where it is said that Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses for the Cushite woman he married. Who was this Cushite, or black, woman, how did Moses meet her, why did he marry her, and why did his siblings speak against him for marrying her? After retirement, I researched these questions as best one could, and wrote the biblical-historical novel The Nubian Princess (amazon.com). Up to this point, all my writing had one thing in common – starting with a body of knowledge and building on that with my research and experience.”

He continued, referring to the trilogy of The Matchmaker of Montréal, The Concierge of Vancouver and The CEO of Toronto, “My next challenge was to write pure fiction, where there is no prior body of knowledge to fall back on. I admired the work of Oscar Wilde and the methods of [George Bernard] Shaw, so I studied their techniques, and decided to write an Oscar Wilde-type play: using caricatures to amuse and make a commentary on society. Matchmaker is the first such attempt.”

Concierge came about, said Ezer, when “the concierge in our condo in Coal Harbor challenged me to write a play about a concierge. So, I obliged him, and this is doubly interesting because it enables me to describe the diversity in Canada, how one city, Vancouver, is so different from Montreal, which is so different from Toronto.

“This trilogy is really about Canada, and each is based in one of these three cities.... The themes in these plays are universal, and not primarily Jewish, and they draw on my experiences living in these cities.”

The Matchmaker of Montréal is directed by Sarah Phillips, and stars David Adams, Lisa Bunting, Robert Moloney, Kirsten Robek and Juno Ruddell. Listed as producer and associate producer and Art Kitching and Laura Moore, respectively, and the play is being mounted by a newcomer to the Vancouver theatre scene, Matchmaker Productions.

“I am not young enough to wait to be discovered, so I started Matchmaker Productions to produce my own work, and then possibly that of other writers,” explained Ezer about the origins of the company. “In addition to the trilogy, we intend to produce my lecture-in-play The Masks of Oscar Wilde, in which the audience will learn about Wilde’s life and hear samples of his work. I believe this to be an innovation, and can be expanded to other great writers whose lives were as interesting and stimulating as their works.

“As well, I attended a theatre in Paris where two performers read Shakespeare’s sonnets in English, while the French translation was projected on a screen. This has been running for 20 years, and enables a French person to hear the sonnets in English while seeing their meaning in French. We hope to bring Shakespeare’s sonnets to Mandarin-speaking audiences in Vancouver. These two concepts can be expanded extensively, and are my attempt to find ways to make theatre interesting, informative and inexpensive to produce.”

The Matchmaker of Montréal previews May 22, and runs until June 2 at the Firehall. Tickets to the preview are half-price, Tuesday-Thursday $25 (students/seniors $20), Friday-Sunday $30/$25. The Jewish Family Service Agency benefits from the May 26, 8:30 p.m., performance, which features a pre-show reception with refreshments and a cash bar that starts at 7 p.m. Tickets for this night are $59, including entry to the show and a copy of The Nubian Princess, to be given at the reception, and can be purchased from Indigo Foods Café (owner Lovena) at 2589 West 16th Ave., in Vancouver (604-537-7288) or by calling Irina at JFSA, 604-257-5151, with your credit card. For more about the JFSA-hosted performance, contact Alexandra Gerson at 604-637-3305 or [email protected].

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