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Synopsis:
Grace
MacDonald, actress and social
activist, reviews a script from American Television Producer, Arthur
Goldspike.
The same day, her Cuban friend Dr. Lazara Ortega laSantos arrives, to begin the Canadian leg of her international lecture tour. Goldspike arrives at Grace’s Toronto apartment that evening. If America and Canada are Fire and Ice (Michael Adams), America and Cuba are fire and brimstone. Arthur is determined that Grace play the elder Laura Secord in a mangled TV version of the War of 1812-14, to air as Laura Secord Redux, in a Fox/Disney co-pro series called Repatriating America’s Lost Heroes. Goldspike’s Laura Secord regrets ratting on the Yanks, and wishes to redeem herself: it would all have been so much simpler if North America was just the USA. Grace, mentored by Tommy Douglas, the father of Canadian Social Medicine, would be amused if she wasn’t so appalled. This American is barking mad! Grace’s son, pharmaceutical executive Grant MacDonald, arrives with his American wife, US State Department 9/11 claims attorney, Nell Bradshaw-MacDonald. They are fleeing the USA. Grant has been charged with trading with the enemy... the enemy in this case being the children in Lazara’s care at her oncological sanatorium in Tararà, just outside Havana. Themes of world domination, liberal social democracy vs. conservative capitalist democracy, and the very survival of The Canadian Enlightenment in this harsh post 9/11 climate, dominate the lives of these five characters. Excess careens among social comedy, agitprop and boulevard in this deadly serious examination of the contemporary Canadian experience. How strong is the true north? How long will she stay free? In Excess, the Canada's future looks very promising indeed. EKS, Montreal: December 10, 2004
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