Cliff Cardinal is a master of emotional manipulation in ‘The Land Acknowledgement, or As You Like It’

The Land Acknowledgement, or As You Like It

Written by and starring Cliff Cardinal. At the CAA Theatre, 651 Yonge St., until April 2. mirvish.com or 1-800-461-3333

When Cliff Cardinal’s radical retelling of Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” premiered at Crow’s Theatre in 2021, all hell broke loose.

The advertising for the show was cryptic and a little impish: by all accounts, this would be an “As You Like It” unlike any audiences had seen before. The cast was a well-kept secret, and would be announced at every performance. And anyone familiar with Cardinal’s previous works — searing yet funny solo shows like “Huff,” about solvent abuse and suicide — likely knew this “As You Like It” would be one for the ages.

Audiences attended in full force, expecting some form of Shakespeare. Instead they got a 90-minute land acknowledgment. Or, more to the point, a monologue about why Cardinal, born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, hates land acknowledgments, with suggestions for the things we really should be acknowledging: the water wars of the not-so-distant future, the unmarked graves of thousands of Indigenous children, the thousands of years of generational trauma embedded within us all.

Cardinal’s performance balanced hot anger with surprising levity, and covered a wide gamut of anecdotes and statistics with gusto. Trick title or not, it was a superb piece of theatre, a conversation between artist and audience, and a testament to the power of marketing when making a show.

The show sent shock waves through the Toronto theatre community and was close to unreviewable: his parting ask at each performance was that the secret of his “As You Like It” be kept to preserve the shock value of the experience for future audiences. And for the most part, audiences and reviewers obliged.

Well, Cardinal’s “As You Like It” is back in Toronto. And on a Mirvish stage, no less, with more than a few jabs at David Mirvish (as well as Canadian theatre more broadly).

But perhaps the most damning of his jokes, at the expense of Toronto’s most powerful theatre company: according to Cardinal, Mirvish made him and his “co-conspirator,” Crow’s Theatre artistic director Chris Abraham, change the title of the show. Lying to the Mirvish subscriber base about the show’s contents wasn’t in the cards.

And so “The Land Acknowledgement, or As You Like It,” was born. No deceptive marketing here.

It’s still very, very good. The script’s tightened up a bit since 2021 but still spans a wide range of topics, emotions and theatrical styles.

Part standup, part dramatic monologue, “The Land Acknowledgement” pokes fun at white Canadians who offer trite acknowledgments instead of using their resources and platforms to make meaningful change.

You know what goes so much further than a land acknowledgment? A donation to a local healing lodge or Native community centre. But no, says Cardinal, dressed plainly in casual clothing against a scarlet, theatrical curtain, white people will begin their event with a land acknowledgment and they’ll think their work is done.

What keeps the performance fresh and well-paced is Cardinal’s agile manoeuvring between ideas and atmospheres.

One moment, we’re laughing at the Rosedale residents in the “expensive seats” at the front of the theatre and the next we’re listening to Cardinal speak about residential schools — or, as he calls them, rape camps — and the Catholic Church’s deleterious effects on thousands of children and their families.

Cardinal’s never afraid to steer his audience toward laughter even when it’s uncomfortable, and more than once he yanks the rug out from beneath a lighthearted moment and asks us to sit in the pain and contemplation of an extended silence. He’s a master of emotional manipulation and endlessly watchable on that big CAA stage.

All this to say: “The Land Acknowledgement” is a must-see from one of the most important playwrights and performers in Canada.

But it’s hard not to wonder what was lost when the title was changed. The bait-and-switch at Crow’s in 2021 was funny, subversive, even genius marketing. One has to assume at least a few Shakespeare-savvy audience members bought a ticket to “As You Like It” and wound up learning a whole lot more than they bargained for when Cardinal took the stage.

There was an opportunity to expand that effect in the show’s Mirvish run — to bring even more (read: wealthy, white) audience members to the show under the guise of a classic play — but the tradeoff for a Mirvish run of “As You Like It” was to leave the “As You Like It” out of it. The reference in the show’s new title doesn’t do much, outside of Cardinal’s brief recounting of what happened at Crow’s in 2021.

It’s worth pointing out that the show tours and when it’s anywhere but here, it’s back in its Shakespearean dressings, with aloof marketing copy and misleading title to match.

See it at Mirvish but, if you can, catch it somewhere else, too: watching audiences realize they had been duped was at least a small part of the fun of the show in 2021. The four stars are for Cardinal, his writing and his enduring charisma; the components of “The Land Acknowledgement, or As You Like It” that haven’t been lost in the move from Crow’s to the CAA Theatre.