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Pounding Nails in the Floor with my Forehead
by Eric Bogosian
directed by Russell Owen
Eric Bogosian is not known for being mellow. There's a reason for that.
I'm not normally a fan of didacticism or theatre of opinions, but with Bogosian you know what you're getting into - he doesn't pretend this is a touching familiy drama. This is rant. Angry funny rant.
A series of monologues strung together by an underlying ideology, Nounding Nails flies or fails with the ability of the man on stage to make you believe him in twenty seconds or less. There is no set to fall back on, no props to play with, no other actor to bounce off of. The actor is on his own.
Michael Kash got off to a slowish start, but by the third monologue - in which the character portrayed is an angry performer doing a show called Pounding Nails in the Floor with my Forehead, coincidentally enough - grabbed us. Addressed directly to the audience instead of an imaginary second person (or people), it was a direct assault on the disengaged watchers in the darkness: it engaged us.
The fourth monologue was perhaps the funniest of all 10: a new-age healer/motivational speaker who encourages his disciples to find their inner baby: "Babies are rude, crude, selfish and... happy! Your inner baby needs to piss on people, your inner baby needs to throw up on people! You need to find your inner baby!"
Kash had us hooked.
His ability to transform himself from meek and mild (the "recovering male") to menacing (the drug dealer) to every personality in between. His voice, his physicality, every aspect of his being becomes the character.
It doesn't hurt that he has great material to work with. Bogosian's script ranges all over the sociopolitical map from homelessness and mental illness to consumerism and middle-class complacency. There are lots of great throwaway lines ("She thinks she's better than other people because she's a stripper"), but what makes it work is that each character rings true: You are this guy. You've met this guy. You've been in this situation, or you're secretly afraid that it might happen to you.
It could happen to you. At the end of the show, you feel like it did.
the triumph of love
by Marivaux
translated and directed by John van Burek
It's hard to believe that a play this smart and this funny could kick around for close to three hundred years before we'd get to see it in Canada. But such is the case with Marivaux's "The Triumph of Love," written in 1732, and currently receiving its first Canadian production at Artword.
A comedy in the classic tradition, the cast features pretty young women, virtuous, but coy and sharp; comical servants (one sly, one goofy), greedy and lascivious; and a middle-aged pair, the very definition of uptight, for the funsters to bounce off of. We were forwarned that the opening scene is heavy on the exposition, and rightly so. Marivaux pokes fun at the forced expository scenes that begin so many works by speeding it up exponentially.
So we learn that the two young "men" before us, Phocion (Amy Price-Francis) and Hermidas (Helen Taylor), are really women in disguise, Phocion being the Princess Léonide (who also pretends to be a young woman named Aspasie), who is in love with a young fellow named Agis, but to whom she cannot reveal her identity, fearing he will hate her on sight, due to a longstanding family feud (her family killed his family to get the throne she now commands). Agis has been kept concealed by a philosopher, Hermocrate (Ross Manson) and his sister Léontine (Philippa Domville), who eschew all that is sensual and light and fun.
Which is where the smart part comes in. This is not merely a coruscating comedy of pranking youths in love; there is another layer, the poking-fun-at-Voltaire layer. Just as Voltaire used picaresque to prove a point, Marivaux uses farce in disproof. It is not mere coincidence that Hermocrate shares much in common with Voltaire, including a disdain for frivolity. Marivaux (much like Preston Sturges did two hundred years later, in Sullivan's Travels) thinks he's missing the point. What good is the search for some abstract notion such as truth, if it involves removing oneself from society? What good will truth do you if you've no one to talk to? What practical purpose can it serve?
Ultimately, the great joy of this work is not its deeper meaning, but its rapidfire wordplay. Marivaux bestows upon his players brilliantly funny lines and observations, and not a single one gets lost in this sharp translation.
And the cast handles it brilliantly. Price-Francis, in particular, earns huge props for her ability to whiz through lines, bouncing from persona to persona (girl, girl pretending to be a boy, girl pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl) with utter credibility, in a rôle requiring her on-stage presence for almost the full two-hour duration of the play.
Amidst this richness of word and stage play - there is much hamming and hiding - the relative austerity of the set is a pleasant oasis of calm. Its simplicity also allows the costumes (a very shwanky renaissance-cross-bred-with-retro-foxy look, and I'm sure I recognised Phocion's blood-red snakeskin "breeches" from the Le Château)relatively simple in terms of the era, to take on an added glow of richness by contrast.
Any further adornment on this already stellar text would have been gilding the lily.
the triumph of love is playing at Artword through 29 May 2001.
By Henrik Ibsen
Translated/adapted by John Murrell
Directed by Vikki Anderson
It is always eye-opening to revisit the classics.
It is hard to believe that "The Doll House" (aka "A Doll's House") was written in 1879. The story of a woman who has thanklessly given all for her husband, and finally asks "why?," is as current and shocking today as it was a hundred years ago. Nora Helmer (Fiona Byrne) is the proverbial songbird in a gilded cage: that is the role she played in childhood for her father, and she continued the charade of pleasantness when she moved into her husband Torvald's house. Torvald (an understated Ben Carlson) is happy as long as she is pleasant and entertaining and doesn't bother him with actual thought. When she realises that she is just an entertaining bauble, like a pet or a painting, their marriage falls apart.
The DVxT production features a newly translated and adapted script by John Murrell. there are a few subtle but notable additions; Nora's comment that "the person you love desperately is never the person you wish to spend most of your time with" stung with sad truth. Fortunately murrell has resisted the urge to change too much, and has allowed ibsen's intentions to remain clear and unencumbered by the trappings of modernity. The story remains riveting and ever current on it's own: one might be tempted to say, "who would want such a wife nowadays?" but one need only look as far as, say, Marlen Cowpland or Anne Marie Sten to see that many men still prefer a pretty trophy to a true companion. Hmm, how many times have I been told I'm cute when I'm mad? It amazes me that some women still fall for this, that they think getting what they want by being sexy and sweet is a good strategy. The problem with using one's "feminine wiles:" eventually they work against you. After years of using playing the silly toy, cuteness as camouflage, Nora's husband, the man who should know her best, believes her incapable of real emotions or thought.
Torvald's treatment of Nora is underscored by Ibsen's use of animal imagery: from his very first line: "is that my little lark twittering out there?" he refers to her as his songbird, his naughty squirrel, nearly always with some diminutive qualifier. He seems incapable of speaking to her without describing her as "little." Murrell's adaptation furthers her childishness by expanding a brief scene in which she plays with her son Ivar (Bob and Emmy have been edited out). The juxtaposition of this scene with nora's negotiations with the desparate Krogstad (Jordan Pettle) emphasises the schism in Nora's life: she is pretty playmate but also shrewd and strong.
The casting further heightens the bird-like nature of Nora: Fiona Byrne is soft, feminine, and delicate, childlike in comparison to the taller, strong-boned supporting actresses (Melee Hutton as Kristina Linde and the always wonderful Ellen-Ray Hennessy as housekeeper/nurse Anna-Maria). the contrast between nora and the others could not be more marked - Kristina is so strong and independent, Anna-Maria so calm and efficient - and yet in some ways they are quite similar. Each has done what had to be done for her own survival and the survival of her family, each has abandoned much of her happiness in pursuit of this quest. Kristina gave up the man she loved in order to find a mate who would support her family, Anna-Maria left her own baby behind to work in the Nora's nursery. Nora's life does seem terribly easy by comparison, if one looks only at the surface. Gradually her life and trials open up before the audience.
Torvald is similarly revealed by degrees. Whilst in the first act he seems merely an arrogant, insufferable bore, he develops into a selfish and shallow cad. His abhorrence of Krogstad is due not to any of Krogstad's supposed moral failings, but for his tendency to be a bit too familiar. Similarly, Torvald dismisses Kristina's needlework, as "knitting ... can never be anything but ungraceful." By the time his full cruelty is revealed, the audience can barely keep from rushing the stage to strangle him. Contrast Torvald with the Dr. Rank (earl pastko), rueful but unbearably kind, or Krogstad, desparate but trying to do right.
The Helmers' doll house is built of the flimsiest cardboard; it was not built to weather such storms. Anderson's austere production lays bare our notions and preconceptions of feminine and masculine virtue for the limiting cage they are.
the Doll House is playing at the canadian stage company theatre through 9 December 2000.
liquor guns karate
By Morwyn Brebner
Directed by Jackie Maxwell
Many would-be-realistic sets fall prey to their own cleanliness. They have no character, they don't look lived-in. Morwyn Brebner's comedy, "Liquor Guns Karate," takes this foible and makes it work.
Director Jackie Maxwell strands her characters in a wallpaper*esque all-white los angeles livingroom. No telephone, no sign of life, just a well-stocked bar. And from this Laurel (Ann Baggley) is supposed to learn something about her recently-deceased, never-met father. She has brought her white-collar-criminal (or fall guy?) boyfriend Chuck (Tom Barnett) here to find a souvenir, maybe start a new life, and hopefully inherit some cash. A link to the past and hope for the future, killing two birds with one stone.
Laurel is incapable of expressing emotion. She has built an impenetrable wall around herself to protect herself from the slings and arrows. The hotel-room-bland house of her father and a freak l.a. ice-storm serve as unobtrusive metaphors for her mental state - subtle reminders that "this is why she's in the mess she's in" which allow the characters to jump into the world of slapstick and sex jokes rather than be weighed down by their angst. Not that the script is a hundred per cent light-hearted, but Brebner (thankfully) manages to let entertainment take precedence, but not to the detriment of the more thought-provoking stuff.
I do have a quibble though (as always): what's with the name? Yes, it's kitschy and catchy, but the final bit of expository dialogue which explains its significance seems tacked on. It's cheating, and that kind of cop-out lessens the overall impact. A good production nonetheless, with strong performances all around. Much better than the last Jackie-Maxwell-directed-play I saw.
Liquor Guns Karate played at the Tarragon Theatre through 29 October 2000.
Motel Helene
By Serge Boucher, Translation by Judith Thompson
Directed by Jackie Maxwell
There seems to be a plague running rampant over contemporary theatre.
It is one born of technical limitations, and also of an aesthetic which has been over-taken by film in the popular imagination. Look at any film script: you will rarely see a scene that lasts longer than five minutes, if that long. Maybe it is also due to the much talked-about pace of modern times that we have come to see our lives as a series of brief inter-connected vignettes, the structure of many new plays, including the newly-translated Motel Hélene. The difficulty here is in the transitions. The briefest of film shoots will last an entire month to produce two hours of screen time; they have the luxury of moving from one locale to the next without making their audience wait. On stage, however, the audience is there as the stagehands dash out to adjust the set, while the actors quickly change backstage.
So what does the audience do? We are left in darkness, listening to (usually very loud) music (in this case, bad rawk with, god knows why, a cello mixed in). For the first five seconds or so, we contemplate what we have just seen. For the next five seconds, we wish the volume was a tad lower (perhaps the noise is intended to distract us from the shadowy figures moving the chairs). Then all we can think is: when will this end?
This is all especially irritating when the lights come up to an empty stage. We can hear a sewing machine in the distance. Then the darkness returns for another eternity. What did we do to deserve this?
Even a script as strong as Boucher’s has a hard time standing up to the disjointedness this technique imposes. It is not until the play is half-over that one begins to settle into the characters. And these are characters that need more sensitivity in the staging. Johanne (Jane Spidell) and Mario (Tony Nappo) can only be described as white-trash; in the hands of less-skilled players (such as Brandon McGibbon, in the role of Francois), they might become caricatures. It is difficult to watch two people doing such wonderfully nuanced work, only to be thwarted at every turn by the staging.
And then there is so-and-so, who opens the first scene with a not-brief-enough monologue delivered in a Shatner-esque vain. Francois is a bit of a pompous ass. He wants very much to shine in the high aesthetic line. He has returned from Montréal to this small town, to a job in his father's depanneur, due to the kind of tragedy that strikes only the young and callow: a broken heart, resulting in a nervous breakdown. He is fascinated by Johanne, who lives in an apartment behind the store. It is the prurient fascination of a rubber-necker at a collision scene. He draws her into friendship while betraying her in his condescending journal entries. He is a colonial anthropolgist, making notes about the quaint habits of the charming natives, the would-be cool observer of Johanne's tortured relationship with Mario. For all of his pretentions to sensitivity, he is completely lacking in empathy.
Johanne returns Francois' fascination to a degree, but not as cold-blooded study. Hers is the gaze of the innocent. He is a beast she has never seen before and does not understand.
Johanne and Mario, unlike Francois, have experienced true anguish. Also unlike Francois, they do not have time for self-pity. They struggle to overcome the past instead of wallowing in it.
Francois is a small town boy who Wants To Write, so maybe the director (Jackie Maxwell) thought it appropriate that he deliver his lines in the monotonous wail of an amateur poet at the open-mike night of a folk club. Surely, however, at some point he will get past his performance and become human? Nope.
If Francois never seems real, Johanne and Mario do. For all the vulgarity and extremely bad hair (it took a while to get used to), Spidell builds an engaging and layered performance. Nappo, as her (ex?) husband, lets us see the bruised human under the surface of the boor. Their relationship veers between tender and shockingly brutal, as so many relationships do. Together yet not together, they enjoy a comfortable domesticity, the neat-freak and the man who eats cold ravioli straight from the Chef Boyardee can (Nappo deserves a bravery medal for that one). They are flippantly casual with one another, and experience their moments of deepest anguish together.
I would welcome a chance to see this play again, with a different Francois and a different director. A brilliant script struggles under the unnecessary weight of these two obstacles.
Motel Hélene plays at the Tarragon Theatre through 21 May 2000.
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