Joey Walks the Old Lost Land in Artistic Fraud’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland’s new production, an adaptation of Wayne Johnston’s award-winning 1998 novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, revisits the complex legacy of Newfoundland politician Joseph R. Smallwood. Smallwood, the man responsible for bringing Newfoundland into the Canadian federation, and who served as its premier for more than two decades, was loved by many for his genuine passion for Newfoundland and resented by many others for his often disastrous political decisions. In this article, Barry Freeman finds in Robert Chafe’s adaptation of the novel for the stage not an examination of Joey as a political figure but a consideration of the deeper cultural psyche of Newfoundland trying to extricate itself from colonial rule.