The QUONTA Drama Region's annual festival brings together
community theatre productions from across northeastern Ontario
in a week of staging, discussing, learning about, and living
the art of theatre. This year there are four productions entered.
I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so I am
coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.
I have neither read nor seen any of these plays on stage, so I am
coming in cold to each performance as pure audience.
Problem Child
by George F. Walker
Presented by Espanola Little Theatre (ELT)
Directed by Chris Cayen
Thursday night's second production of the Festival brought the greatest possible contrast to the gentle reminiscent tone of the first show: a savagely funny, edgy black comedy.
This type of play is Canadian playwright George Walker's kingdom. I've now seen productions of three of his plays, and each one has dug deeply into the fate of the dispossessed underclass of modern North American society, pulling up f-bombs, crimes, broken lives, treasons, stratagems, and spoils in great profusion.
The script is structured in an unusual arrangement of seven scenes, uninterrupted by any act division. Although it likely has been performed elsewhere with an intermission, this performance gained momentum by skipping the mid-play break -- and the show was, in point of fact, not overly long.
The setting is a cheap and sleazy motel. The stage set faithfully recreated the ambience, from the walls painted in a shade resembling vomit and covered with huge damp stains, to the echt-hotel bed and night tables, and the half-collapsed curtain rod over the window. Ingeniously, the design team (uncredited) even left the seams between the flats visible, just as a skinflint motel owner might have skipped the step of finishing off the drywall. Despair was palpable in this miserable room.
Furniture was arranged to create plenty of useful acting space. Since the side walls were set at right angles to the back, I couldn't see from my seat the TV set which was the focus of much attention, set right against or on the stage left wall. Lighting was simple and at all times effective. City street sounds were used to strong effect to bridge the brief blackouts indicating time lapse between scenes.
This is very much an actor's play, the drama driven solely at almost all times by the intentions and motivations of the four characters (precious little room for fancy technical effects or foobaz here).
One choice that intrigued me was the TV set with the sound turned off as a character watched an unending string of talk shows with their ridiculous set-ups of the guests. Truly, given the nature of the script, we didn't need to hear a word of what was said on the tube to be able to imagine it all.
Walker's portrayals of the lost and losers of society tend to bring forth a clutch of unpleasant people one would never willingly meet. In this case, that was only partly true, and the unpleasantness wasn't all confined to one side of the conflict.
Warren Tilston played the TV-addicted R. J. with great energy, leaning in towards the set as one might lean into the face of an opponent during a bar argument. His voice soared to almost squeaky heights as he remonstrated with the TV hosts.
Later in the show, he developed a whole range of facial expressions in response to the increasingly fraught situation which Denise created and aggravated. Watching all those shades of emotion play across his face like a movie film was enough to set anyone laughing. Yet there was no suggestion of merely signalling the audience for cheap laughs.
The aggressive, deceitful, and indeed unstable Denise was given an appropriately edgy performance by Angie Scheel. Her habit of dropping her chin and raising her shoulders when angry gave me the feeling that she might launch into a football tackle against her opposition at any moment. A little more variety in the use of the voice, with more raising and lowering of the vocal energy, would give this character even more believable (and therefore threatening) presence on stage.
Scheel then found some fine shades of emotion during the monologue at the end of the play, giving us an even clearer insight into her tortuous and tormented reactions to the hand she had to play.
Jen Tilston presented the prim and proper social worker, Helen, as a walking, talking social-work textbook -- which is the way the part is written. Even her loss of temper with Denise seemed almost cold and calculated. The transformation after her accident was startling, but appropriate too, as the almost robotic exterior cracked to reveal the human being hiding inside. While she played the wooziness of this scene very well, there was one moment when she briefly recovered her full vocal and physical energy for a few seconds before lapsing back into a stupor -- a minor oops.
Mike Boivin took an interesting tack in performing the role of Phillie -- switching back and forth between an almost mechanistic approach and an enthusiastic one, according to his moods. His vacuum cleaner scene was one of the comic highlights of the show.
Director and actors created some memorable and entertaining stage pictures at different points in the play, and the story came across as clearly as all the f-bombs.
Overall, I give this company full credit for presenting this show with warmth and humanity enough to make me (almost) care about the characters at the end of the evening. That's much more than either of the previous Walker plays I have seen have been able to achieve.
This type of play is Canadian playwright George Walker's kingdom. I've now seen productions of three of his plays, and each one has dug deeply into the fate of the dispossessed underclass of modern North American society, pulling up f-bombs, crimes, broken lives, treasons, stratagems, and spoils in great profusion.
The script is structured in an unusual arrangement of seven scenes, uninterrupted by any act division. Although it likely has been performed elsewhere with an intermission, this performance gained momentum by skipping the mid-play break -- and the show was, in point of fact, not overly long.
The setting is a cheap and sleazy motel. The stage set faithfully recreated the ambience, from the walls painted in a shade resembling vomit and covered with huge damp stains, to the echt-hotel bed and night tables, and the half-collapsed curtain rod over the window. Ingeniously, the design team (uncredited) even left the seams between the flats visible, just as a skinflint motel owner might have skipped the step of finishing off the drywall. Despair was palpable in this miserable room.
Furniture was arranged to create plenty of useful acting space. Since the side walls were set at right angles to the back, I couldn't see from my seat the TV set which was the focus of much attention, set right against or on the stage left wall. Lighting was simple and at all times effective. City street sounds were used to strong effect to bridge the brief blackouts indicating time lapse between scenes.
This is very much an actor's play, the drama driven solely at almost all times by the intentions and motivations of the four characters (precious little room for fancy technical effects or foobaz here).
One choice that intrigued me was the TV set with the sound turned off as a character watched an unending string of talk shows with their ridiculous set-ups of the guests. Truly, given the nature of the script, we didn't need to hear a word of what was said on the tube to be able to imagine it all.
Walker's portrayals of the lost and losers of society tend to bring forth a clutch of unpleasant people one would never willingly meet. In this case, that was only partly true, and the unpleasantness wasn't all confined to one side of the conflict.
Warren Tilston played the TV-addicted R. J. with great energy, leaning in towards the set as one might lean into the face of an opponent during a bar argument. His voice soared to almost squeaky heights as he remonstrated with the TV hosts.
Later in the show, he developed a whole range of facial expressions in response to the increasingly fraught situation which Denise created and aggravated. Watching all those shades of emotion play across his face like a movie film was enough to set anyone laughing. Yet there was no suggestion of merely signalling the audience for cheap laughs.
The aggressive, deceitful, and indeed unstable Denise was given an appropriately edgy performance by Angie Scheel. Her habit of dropping her chin and raising her shoulders when angry gave me the feeling that she might launch into a football tackle against her opposition at any moment. A little more variety in the use of the voice, with more raising and lowering of the vocal energy, would give this character even more believable (and therefore threatening) presence on stage.
Scheel then found some fine shades of emotion during the monologue at the end of the play, giving us an even clearer insight into her tortuous and tormented reactions to the hand she had to play.
Jen Tilston presented the prim and proper social worker, Helen, as a walking, talking social-work textbook -- which is the way the part is written. Even her loss of temper with Denise seemed almost cold and calculated. The transformation after her accident was startling, but appropriate too, as the almost robotic exterior cracked to reveal the human being hiding inside. While she played the wooziness of this scene very well, there was one moment when she briefly recovered her full vocal and physical energy for a few seconds before lapsing back into a stupor -- a minor oops.
Mike Boivin took an interesting tack in performing the role of Phillie -- switching back and forth between an almost mechanistic approach and an enthusiastic one, according to his moods. His vacuum cleaner scene was one of the comic highlights of the show.
Director and actors created some memorable and entertaining stage pictures at different points in the play, and the story came across as clearly as all the f-bombs.
Overall, I give this company full credit for presenting this show with warmth and humanity enough to make me (almost) care about the characters at the end of the evening. That's much more than either of the previous Walker plays I have seen have been able to achieve.
No comments:
Post a Comment