The 2011 Canadian Federal Election Leaders Debate was by no means scintillating television. Jack Layton sprayed zingers, Michael Ignatieff made strained attempts at showing off his erudition, and Stephen Harper, for some reason I couldn’t figure out, adopted the manner of a particularly patient kindergarten teacher, speaking very slowly and avoiding any words that were liable to trouble an undecided Canadian voter, such as “climate change,” “Coast Guard closures,” or “oil spill.” He sopped up the other leaders’ barbs with a wide and creepy smile. I remember thinking it was impossible he had so little to say about, well, anything. You shouldn’t be able to win a debate while revealing nothing of your character, personality, or even basic opinions, right? Harper went on to win his first majority Government, of course. And everything in Canada has been fantastic ever since.

The uproarious recent comedy Proud, written by Michael Healey and playing at Strathcona’s Firehall Arts Centre until April 25, reimagines the Prime Minister who (as a particularly inspired piece of invective has it) seems like “a bag of mashed potatoes in a suit.” Set in an even more dystopic Canada than the one we currently inhabit, the Conservatives extend their landslide to Quebec, winning ridings with placeholder candidates who entered the race thinking they had no chance of winning. The play opens with the Prime Minister of Canada (Andrew Wheeler) directly addressing the audience while congratulating all his rookie MPs and lecturing them about discipline, just so the audience could discover for themselves what it feels like to be condescended to by Harper in person. After the opening monologue, the PM sits with his aide (Craig Erickson, amusing in twinkling sycophancy) and plans out Parliament seating arrangements—namely, how to get Conservative MPs who had wronged him in the past out of his line of eyesight. Into this den of propriety walks Jisabella Lyth (Emmelia Gordon), a newly minted young Quebec MP, wondering whether anyone could lend her a condom so that she can get it on with Evan Solomon (not a cameo performance, sadly). In the character of Lyth, Proud locates the perfect foil for our Prime Minister: a normal human woman.

Lyth becomes the PM’s ally, sometimes adversary, and sharp debating partner. She is a single mother and bar manager with no personal or emotional connection to politics. As she takes part in the PM’s scheme to distract the public from his true goals by tabling a no-hope anti-abortion bill (she is pro-choice and mentions how misleading the term “pro-life” is), she realizes that politics can be great fun if you are willing to abandon any real conviction. Healey’s script is wise and cynical about how people form their beliefs, positing that citizens just want to rant about what they oppose and find parties that hate the same things they do. The dialogue is consistently hilarious (characters tell each other to “pretend sex is like the United Nations: meaningless”), knowing, and chock full of quality CanCon jokes. I loved Lyth’s natural way with profanity, telling the Prime Minister “I’m gonna be fucked for names for a while,” though the script may over-rely on Stephen Harper dropping F-bombs.

Proud couldn’t work without fully committed lead performances, and both are fantastic. Emmelia Gordon is a force of fucking nature (I think that’s what her character would say), getting maximum laughs from each line reading. She has excellent timing with the difficult dialogue and her glee in achieving power is infectious. Andrew Wheeler’s Harper impression is uncanny, but the much more challenging task he accomplishes is to humanize the Prime Minister. He moves past the officious automaton of the opening scenes and reveals a man whose biggest problem is that he can’t let the public see his large vision for Canada. He is caring, pragmatic, and (horribly, horribly) sexy. I will never see Stephen Harper’s cardigan in the same way after having seen it ripped off in passion, no matter how much I may want to.

The play’s tone shifts between battle of ideas and sex farce, sometimes unsuccessfully, and I found the ending, which gestures at the next generation of Canadian politicians, to be incoherent. The script’s highlight is a bravura monologue in which the PM lists all the many things he only pretends to care about (Israel, the long gun registry, arts funding), naming and slaying every sacred cow of Canadian outrage from either side of the House of Commons. The PM only pursues these side issues so that he can give Canada “an appropriately-sized government,” an ideally mundane dream. Proud‘s conspiracy theory is that the people who are in power are secretly plotting to make the country much better, that when you get to know the man behind the curtain, he’s actually really swell.

It’s very comforting to think that our rulers only want what’s best for us, but (in my opinion and experience) it’s not true. So if you only leave your house once this year, for God and country’s sake, please use that trip to vote in 2015’s Federal Election (in October, unless chicanery occurs). But if you do happen to venture out more than once, go see Proud. You’ll have a fun time.

Proud will be playing at the Firehall Arts Centre April 7 – 25, 2015.
Info and tickets found here.