The annual Theatre Ontario Festival brings together four outstanding productions selected from the four regional community theatre festivals. Days at the Festival are occupied with various workshops, play readings, and other activities, and a different play is presented on each of the four nights, Wednesday through Saturday. Awards are presented at a brunch on Sunday morning. I'll be reviewing all the performances, and also presenting a complete list of award winners on Sunday.
***** ***** *****
Little Gem
by Elaine Murphy
Representing ACT-CO (GTA and Central Ontario)
Presented by Toronto Irish Players
Directed by Cliona Kenny
This second performance of the Festival presented the audience with a tough challenge: a play in which we see and hear almost nothing actually happen, since three women talk in a series of monologues about the joys, sorrows, challenges, and hopes of their interconnected lives -- with only a bare few seconds of on-stage interaction with each other. It was not the least surprising for me to read, after the performance, that the playwright based her work on real-life stories which she heard in her work at a women's health organization. It certainly had the flavour of reality-based writing, right from the outset.
As audience, I always find it difficult to feel any sort of interaction with monologues. That's particularly true of monologues that narrate always in the past tense, as opposed to monologues that reveal events and states of mind in real time. Then, too, there's a world of difference between a monologue that lasts 5 minutes and a serial monologue that lasts for 2 hours.
The setting designed by Bernadette Hunt and Sean Treacy consisted of a series of three platform risers in a row, with a stylized frame silhouette suggesting part of a house on each one. A few simple chairs on and in front of the risers completed the set.
The cyclorama backdrop was sensitively lighted, and the lighting as sensitively varied, with lighting design by Mary Jane Boon.
Each of the three actors had her own platform, and worked mostly within that space and the area immediately in front of it. The central and highest platform was a reasonable height above the floor, and the front edge of that platform was used as a seating spot by all three at one time or another.
The three characters belong to three generations of the same Dublin family. We first meet Amber (Billie Jean Shannon), aged 19, then her mother, Lorraine (Rebecca De La Cour), and finally Lorraine's mother, Kay (Barbara Taylor).
All three presented the physical sides of their characters very well. Shannon's fidgets as Amber certainly came across as genuinely teenaged. Lorraine's edginess and tension were obvious from the outset in De La Cour's performance. Taylor completely captured the mixture of weariness and iron-willed determination in Kay's character.
I found the vocal side of the performances a bit less rewarding. Too many sentences of too many monologues were spoken all at the same speed, without enough give and take in the rhythms and pacing. Although there was good variation in inflections and pitches from all three actors, the lack of variety in pacing helped to make the show duller and slower than it needed to be. In fairness, I think this problem is partly built in, due to the nature of Elaine Murphy's rather anti-dramatic script. But there would still be more room to explore those pacing possibilities.
On the other hand, the company's clear diction made it easy to follow the storylines in spite of the appropriately broad Irish accents and the use in the script of slang words less familiar on this side of the ocean. All three actors also timed their comic payoff lines very neatly.
There were three portions of the show where the dramatic tension genuinely ratcheted up. One was Lorraine's as-it-happens monologue about going to the salsa class and meeting Niall for the first time. Another was Amber's monologue about discovering her pregnancy. The third, and most moving, was Kay's description of discovering her husband fallen on the floor of the sitting room, ending with him dying in her arms. Taylor's combination of determination and sheer heartbreak in this moment totally transcended the limitations of the script as she conjured up the ultimate accolade of great theatre -- the audience sitting rapt, transfixed, silent, holding their breaths for fear of breaking the spell she cast.
Given the effect of those moments, it's unfortunate that this script didn't allow more opportunity for these three gifted actors to flex their dramatic wings.
The setting designed by Bernadette Hunt and Sean Treacy consisted of a series of three platform risers in a row, with a stylized frame silhouette suggesting part of a house on each one. A few simple chairs on and in front of the risers completed the set.
The cyclorama backdrop was sensitively lighted, and the lighting as sensitively varied, with lighting design by Mary Jane Boon.
Each of the three actors had her own platform, and worked mostly within that space and the area immediately in front of it. The central and highest platform was a reasonable height above the floor, and the front edge of that platform was used as a seating spot by all three at one time or another.
The three characters belong to three generations of the same Dublin family. We first meet Amber (Billie Jean Shannon), aged 19, then her mother, Lorraine (Rebecca De La Cour), and finally Lorraine's mother, Kay (Barbara Taylor).
All three presented the physical sides of their characters very well. Shannon's fidgets as Amber certainly came across as genuinely teenaged. Lorraine's edginess and tension were obvious from the outset in De La Cour's performance. Taylor completely captured the mixture of weariness and iron-willed determination in Kay's character.
I found the vocal side of the performances a bit less rewarding. Too many sentences of too many monologues were spoken all at the same speed, without enough give and take in the rhythms and pacing. Although there was good variation in inflections and pitches from all three actors, the lack of variety in pacing helped to make the show duller and slower than it needed to be. In fairness, I think this problem is partly built in, due to the nature of Elaine Murphy's rather anti-dramatic script. But there would still be more room to explore those pacing possibilities.
On the other hand, the company's clear diction made it easy to follow the storylines in spite of the appropriately broad Irish accents and the use in the script of slang words less familiar on this side of the ocean. All three actors also timed their comic payoff lines very neatly.
There were three portions of the show where the dramatic tension genuinely ratcheted up. One was Lorraine's as-it-happens monologue about going to the salsa class and meeting Niall for the first time. Another was Amber's monologue about discovering her pregnancy. The third, and most moving, was Kay's description of discovering her husband fallen on the floor of the sitting room, ending with him dying in her arms. Taylor's combination of determination and sheer heartbreak in this moment totally transcended the limitations of the script as she conjured up the ultimate accolade of great theatre -- the audience sitting rapt, transfixed, silent, holding their breaths for fear of breaking the spell she cast.
Given the effect of those moments, it's unfortunate that this script didn't allow more opportunity for these three gifted actors to flex their dramatic wings.
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