Play pits Holocaust against Quebec’s language laws

From left, Allan Price, Ron Boyd, Madeline Leon, Aris Tyros and Gloria Valentine in Teatron Toronto’s Delimax

TORONTO — Playwright Harvey Ostroff had a flash of inspiration while he and his wife were eating at the Snowdon Delicatessen on one of their visits to Montreal. 

It was 1983 and Ostroff, a former Montrealer, noticed that the restaurant sign he was familiar with had been changed to DeliSnowdon. Ostroff was aware of the implications of Bill 101, Quebec’s 1977 French language charter, he said, but he was still surprised that the deli’s name had been altered. 

The restaurant’s owner told Ostroff that the “language police had been by,” and ordered him to change the English sign and also to provide a French-only menu to comply with Bill 101. A customer in the restaurant who overheard the conversation muttered, “This is just like the Nazis coming back.” 

Based on that exchange, Ostroff wrote the first draft of DeliMax, a play about Max Farber, the Jewish owner of a Montreal delicatessen and a survivor of Auschwitz, who believes that the nationalism rising in Quebec is Germany in the 1930s revisited. 

Teatron Toronto Jewish Theatre is mounting a production of DelixMax that opens in Toronto in early January.

On the evening of the biggest ice storm in years, Max’s French-Canadian waitress, Monique, and her boyfriend, Rejean, who denies the Holocaust and says the English population and the Jews should be banished from Quebec in order to end the oppression of the people, are stranded in the deli. Max, along with his partner, Nathan, who is also a Holocaust survivor, decide to teach the couple the true meaning of oppression. 

Ostroff’s research for DeliMax included interviewing Holocaust survivors at Montreal’s Cummings Jewish Centre for Seniors and the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre. Ostroff said that a few of the survivors he spoke to connected Quebec nationalism with Nazism. 

“Some people were worried,” Ostroff said. Reflecting on the ultra-nationalist views held by a segment of Quebecers, he added, “That’s what it was like in the ‘80s for some people.” 

Ostroff, who now lives near White Rock, B.C., said the Parti Québécois was decimated in the Quebec provincial election last April because of its proposed charter of values, Bill 60, aimed to secularize Quebecers. The bill was controversial, especially its proposed prohibition of public sector employees from wearing or displaying “conspicuous” religious symbols. The bill was “a consternation to Jews and Muslims who didn’t want to be secularized. It was a mistake to bring it up,” Ostroff said.

“That time has passed in Quebec.” He added that today’s Quebecers feel “they’re a part of a generation, not apart from a nation.”

Ari Weisberg, Teatron’s artistic director and DeliMax’s director, received the script for the play six years ago. He said he decided to produce the play this season because he made a connection between the controversy created by the charter of values and memories he has of Quebec politics over the years.  

DeliMax was produced in Washington and Oregon in 1985, and Teatron’s production is the Canadian premiere. In the Teatron production, Ron Boyd plays deli owner Max; Gloria Valentine plays Yetta, an old friend of Max’s; Allan Price is Nathan; Madeline Leon plays the waitress Monique, and Aris Tyros plays the ultra-nationalist Rejean.   

DeliMax is a very strong drama,” Weisberg said. “It brings together Holocaust memories as well as the situation in Montreal. They are both strong topics.” 

Each season, Teatron’s plays have a unifying theme, and this season’s theme is works that don’t shy away from controversy, Weisberg said. 

Peace  Warriors, which ran in November, explored anti-Israelism, while The Value of Names, which opens in February, delves into the McCarthy era. DeliMax pits the Holocaust against Quebec’s language laws. Teatron holds audience discussions after each show. 

Teatron Theatre presents DeliMax at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, Studio Theatre, 5040 Yonge St., Jan. 7 to 18, 2015. For tickets: Toronto Centre for the Arts box office, 5040 Yonge St.; Ticketmaster 1-855-985-ARTS (2787) and online at www.teatrontheatre.com.