Controversial Stephen Harper-inspired play opens in Ottawa

Michael Healey's play Proud, is a comedic look at what happens when political and sexual tensions collide. Healy (right) has admitted the main character is based on Stephen Harper.

By: Kamila Hinkson News reporter

It’s a performance that involves power, politics and seduction. It’s coming to Ottawa. But it’s not happening on Parliament Hill.

A satirical play that courted controversy in Toronto because its main character was considered to be uncomfortably similar to Stephen Harper is to debut Tuesday at the Great Canadian Theatre Company.

Proud is set in 2011, after an election that sees the Conservative party win a majority, helped by a virtual sweep of seats in Quebec.

The prime minister begins implementing his fiscally conservative agenda, only to be distracted by Jisbella Lyth, a novice Quebec MP and former manager of a St-Hubert restaurant.

The play was written by and stars Michael Healy, who was the playwright-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. A comedic look at what happens when political and sexual tensions collide, Healy has admitted the main character is based on Harper.

Last year, Healy said the Tarragon’s artistic director told him the theatre would not be staging the play due to fears it would prompt a libel lawsuit from the Prime Minister’s Office. At the time, the theatre declined to comment directly on the decision. Healy left the company and staged the play a year ago at Toronto’s Berkeley Street Theatre.

Beginning Tuesday, Ottawa’s Great Canadian Theatre Company isputting on the play for a roughly three-week run.

In his review, the Star’s theatre critic Richard Ouzounian called the play “dazzlingly witty, surgically precise and scathingly satirical,” while adding that the performance in no way libels our actual prime minister.

The Great Canadian Theatre Company’s artistic director Eric Coates said in an interview Proud is the strongest piece of new Canadian work that had seen in the past year. And its provocative nature dovetails nicely with the theatre’s mandate, to provoke examinations of Canadian life, he continued.

Opening night is sold out, reflecting the buzz surrounding the play. It makes sense considering it is being staged in the city where the government sits, he said.

As for the legal issues, Coates said they were sorted out prior to the play’s run in Toronto. Healy hired a lawyer who vetted the play and found nothing libelous about it.

“When I compare it to satirical material that is routinely published in political cartoons across the country, or broadcast on satirical comedy shows, it doesn’t even begin to approach that level of viciousness,” Coates said.