Soaring into the highs and lows of memory

Billy Bishop was told he was the worst student in RMC's history. He cheated on his exam - and accidentally handed in the crib notes with it.The Bishop you may have heard of - the Canadian ace who brought down 72 German planes in World War I - is a disarmingly unassuming hero in John Gray and Eric Peterson's musical memoir Billy Bishop Goes to War. This two-man show has undergone many changes since it first opened in 1978 (Peterson has called it a "work in progress"). Now, with both actors in their sixties, the tone has shifted from youthfulness to rumination. The older Bishop, in pink bathrobe and pyjamas, recalls his trials at RMC, muddy tenure as a cavalry officer, and rise as an unstoppable fighter pilot with "great eyes". Directed by Ted Dykstra and housed by the ever-excellent Soulpepper Company, Billy Bishop treats aerial combat and military life with levity and gravity.

Peterson, of Street Legal and Corner Gas, plays senior and junior Bishop, and just about everybody else. Accompanying him on piano and vocals is Gray, providing a musical stream of consciousness to the narrative. Bishop is brought to life as a bumbling, clumsy, na've but hugely talented fighter pilot who stumbles through the mud of trenches before discovering the joy and danger of flight.

Despite their obvious chemistry, Gray and Peterson (close friends since 1969) are almost too comfortable around each other. In the predominantly comic first act they occasionally step out of character and reference past productions of the show itself. For someone unfamiliar to the show this side-winking is a little too sentimental. However, the production remains deep in its own colourful stories, especially in the darker second act. Bishop, now a pilot, is confronted with the thrill of killing others and the despair of watching others being killed.

He makes no bones about the satisfaction he receives from watching an enemy engine burst into flame. Bishop clearly gets a kick out of what he does so well: destroying German planes. This blood lust is brought forth by Peterson, who animates the pitched dogfights with spitting ga-ga-ga-ga-ga's from the top of Gray's piano and every other surface of the stage.

Maybe I am overemphasizing the play's dramatic qualities. Rest assured, there are many humorous episodes, most involving Bishop's run-ins with British condescension. One officer reviews Bishop's cavalry record with disgust, adding "on the positive side, you've been wounded." Peterson's talent at character acting carries his performance from drunk Cockney soldier to prim Lady to a vehemently anti-colonial seven-foot tall butler.

Accentuating the tales are Gray's songs that often verge on the excessively folksy, like the expectable "Nobody Shoots No One in Canada" (except the RCMP). Other numbers are a little more thought-provoking, like the cabaret-style "Survive" in which Peterson gyrates as French femme "Ellen".

Survival is perhaps this musical's main preoccupation. At the end of his letters to his sweetheart Margaret, Bishop signs "I remain," a refrain that affirms his survival as friends drop dead around him. All the excitement of war is tampered with sad reflection; all nostalgia is edged with cynicism. Peterson is expert at emotional shifts, riding high on exhilaration in one moment and sinking into weariness the next.

The exhaustion of reflection closes the play, and we are left with a thoughtful Bishop, transformed from a slapstick fool to an old man confronting the ambiguity of his memories. When he mutters the war was "one hell of a time" he means it: a hell of atmospheric adrenaline and plummeting loss.