Reviews: two indie theatre companies make their marks
The summer season winds down with strong productions of Oleanna and Pigeon!
It’s hard times for theatres in general, but especially for indie theatres trying to make a name for themselves. So I’m glad I caught the late-summer (read: when venues are often available) offerings of two companies that are relatively new — to me, at least. They’ll both be on my radar going forward.
David Mamet’s 1992 two-hander Oleanna can often feel like a biased, one-sided play — an obvious artistic response to the first wave of so-called “political correctness” on college campuses. In Icarus Theatre’s terrific revival (Rating: ✭✭✭✭), it’s fascinating to revisit the work in the current social climate, when we’re a lot more aware of, and sensitive to, personal/physical boundaries and issues of class, mental health, power and privilege.
A distraught college student named Carol (Star Slade) goes to her professor’s office for some guidance. When she arrives — without having made an appointment — her professor, John (Aris Athanasopoulos), is busy fielding calls about a house he and his wife are looking to buy (they’ve put down a deposit).
In between Carol’s halting enquiries about the course she’s failing, the phone keeps ringing, and it soon comes out that John is relying on getting tenure to help pay for the property. The promotion is all but settled; one more committee meeting stands in his way.
Carol’s motivation is less clear, however. She doesn’t understand the course work, and even though she’s bought John’s book to help her out — something she keeps repeating — she’s frustrated, confused and angry.
This opening scene is crucial, because it lays the groundwork for what’s to come, and you’ll find yourself replaying moments to try to explain what happens later. Not to give too much away, but Carol, backed up by some unseen and unnamed “group,” files a complaint to an academic committee about John’s behaviour. This, in turn, jeopardizes his job.
The appeal of watching a play like this is not to decide who’s right — or wrong — although it does feel like Mamet still sides with John. It’s to savour the details that ultimately contribute to the outcome, which director Anthony Goncharov and the actors handle superbly.
Look at how Athanasopoulos has to glance at the title page of Carol’s paper to recall her name, or the self-satisfied way he deflects her insecurities by talking about his own feelings of “stupidity.” Is his concern genuine, or merely — as we say today — “performative”? And how stupid or smug do you have to be to guarantee a student an A while saying “I like you”?
The actor, who was excellent in The Effect a few years ago, has been cast a little younger than is normal (John is supposed to be middle-aged), and if anything, that changes the dynamic between the two characters. Since John seems only a decade or so older than Carol, you can see how she might view the social and economic gap between their lives as unfair, particularly when he questions the point of university itself.
For her part, Slade creates a sharp portrait of a young woman who’s at the end of her rope. Mamet wisely avoids being too specific about Carol’s substandard work, but Slade’s posture and continued flipping through her notebook clearly evoke her fear and discomfort. She doesn’t telegraph too much of what she’s feeling, letting us imagine the conversations she later has (not in the play, of course) with members of her group.
The two actors handle the overlapping dialogue beautifully; the timing and precision have to be just right. The playwright is smart enough not to spell things out too clearly for us, so phrases like, “You see?” and “Can’t you see?” contain intriguing possibilities.
The production works well in the Tarragon Extraspace. Bharat N. Vyas’ naturalistic set suggests a tasteful, comfortable college office; one of Goncharov’s boldest moves is to use a lighting effect (Lidia Foote is the designer) in an adjoining vestibule to obscure a sequence in the second scene so we’re left to wonder what happened. Emily Anne Corcoran’s costumes, while telling us about the characters’ status, evolve through the course of the play. As Carol’s power rises, she puts on more layers, more armour; John, meanwhile, sheds layers until he’s in a T-shirt at the end.
There are only a handful of performances left. But the company is mounting two more productions this season: Dennis Kelly’s DNA (in November) and Polly Stenham’s Julie (a take on Strindberg’s Miss Julie) next March. I’ll be there. Details for Oleanna and the rest of the season are here.
While less polished than Oleanna, Bird on Stage’s recent revival of Garrett M. Ryan Abrams’s 2017 play Pigeon! (Rating: ✭✭✭) is a wild bit of absurdist theatre that demonstrates a lot of pluck.
Robert Leitner plays John, a disturbed young man who lives with his kvetching mother in North York and enjoys nothing much except sitting on a park bench and feeding the pigeons.
After he watches the 1930s movie Frankenstein on TV one night, he gets the idea to build his own kind of companion, cobbled together from the dead carcasses of pet birds, a whole lot of glue and essential organs from people he meets and butchers in his daily life.
During his search for body parts, he notices a mysterious man looking back; once they meet each other, it turns out the man has his own dark and troubled past.
There’s a bit too much going on in Abrams’ script, shot through with allusions to Poe, Kafka and Shelley, as well as the Holocaust. And I’m not sure we need the narration by the author himself to bookend the show.
It’s in the heightened direction — by Abrams and Leitner — that the material comes to life. Each murder is accompanied by garish sound effects, and a shadow puppetry sequence brings another horrific sequence to life effectively. The props are particularly ghastly.
Leitner, wearing Joker-like makeup, could use more nuance; he’s bold and confrontational from the get-go, but has nowhere to go from there. Supporting performances by Natalie Pepe-Francis, Hildebrand and Alice Marin, however, feel fresh and spontaneous.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this small company eventually joined up with Eldritch Theatre at the Red Sandcastle. There’s some crossover potential with their audiences, who are used to seeing weird, genre-breaking works. Who knows? Halloween isn’t far away.
Nightwood/Tarragon ticket giveaway
Congratulations to Don K., who won a pair of tickets to Chelsea Woolley’s play Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, produced by Nightwood and Tarragon.
Don correctly identified that Nightwood’s new performance space was called the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre. That’s where Enormity will run from September 16 to October 5. Details here.