Regional Storyteller

Laurent d’Entremont

I attended a very enjoyable dinner theatre recently at the Historical Acadian Village of Nova Scotia in Yarmouth County. The performance was called “La Sacree Lettre!” which translates to “That Darn Letter!”

The choice of dishes being served were the Acadian dish of rappie pie and seafood linguini, and while I may be Acadian and French- speaking, I am not Acadian enough or French-speaking enough to eat rappie pie when I have a choice of seafood linguini. It was very delicious.

The play, which was a comedy, was set in 1943, during the war years. In between skits there were dancers who strut their stuff to the same tune that Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and others did over 60 years ago.

In this cast of eight actors we find “Benoit” (Neil Amirault) and “Bernadette” (Germaine d’Entremont), his wife, and their nine children, who are surviving on the family farm and barely able to keep the wolf from the door.

Although the presentation was primarily in French, there was one character who spoke only English, a very loud and noisy cousin from Boston who dressed in bright colours and wore feathers on her hat. Denise d’Eon played the part of ‘Renette’, a flirt and a flapper type who pretended to have forgotten her French, although she understood it very well. Renette always greeted her uncle Benoit as ‘Uncle Bennie’, much to his annoyances, and he could not wait for her to return to Boston.

The story begins, or rather comes to life, when a letter from the income tax department arrives addressed to Benoit. Of course, Benoit and his wife Bernadette, like many uneducated Acadians of an earlier time, panicked, assuming a letter from a government agency meant trouble or bad news. The letter states that a representative from the tax department would make a visit to review errors that Benoit had made in past years while filing his income taxes.

About this time, Renette with her Boston savoire-faire glides into the room and convinces the family how serious an offence it is to cheat on your taxes. As a matter of fact, “the bread winner could end up in jail,” she said. “Who would feed his large family?”

She asks her uncle if he had always declared all his earnings. Benoit with a look of gloom and doom does some serious thinking. “I have sold parsnips to the postmaster once, and a sack of potatoes to someone else, and forgot to include it on my tax return,” he said, “plus I once sold half a pig under the table.” At this point, the audience roared with laughter.

Renette does not help with her stories of income tax cheaters being caught and punished.

In the next scene, the day of reckoning arrives in the person of the income tax representative, a young man from Halifax dressed in a gray tweed suit, toting a briefcase and wearing an authoritative look on his face. Benoit tries to explain how easy it is to forget income from parsnips and potatoes when making a tax return.

The tax man is amused, but listens with great interest. Finally, he said, “You don’t owe us any money, it is the other way around … we owe money to you…over the years you have made tax deductions claiming only one child instead of nine.” Bernadette and the children jumped with joy at the good news. Not only are they relieved, but Benoit will receive a much-needed check in the mail to boot.

Before the curtain falls -- after we have eaten our apple crisp desert -- Rennette enters, or rather dances into the room and immediately starts flirting with the young tax representative. She asks if he is married…he is not…and he is staying at the “Grand” in Yarmouth. Renette and the young man leave the house, arm in arm. Benoit gives a sigh of relief; two of his problems have just left the building. (This play was written by Kathy Nickerson who works at the Historical Acadian Village. The village will open to the public on June 4 this season).

laudent@hotmail.com