Sometimes you want to be intellectually challenged by art. You want to have your world view shaken up. You want the show you go to see to challenge and provoke you, to ask hard questions, to demand something of you, to make you think.
Other times, you've had a long tough week at work, or home, or both and you just want to go grab a drink, your besties or your significant other and head into a theatre to forget your troubles and have fun.
50 SHADES...is the latter sort of theatrical experience.
You don't have to be one of the 50 million people who bought the book to enjoy this musical parody.
For those of you who have been on a voyage to Mars for the past two years, "50 Shades... " is a trilogy of erotic fiction following the romantic adventures of Anastasia Steele, a virginal English lit undergraduate and hardware store clerk who falls under the spell of Christian Grey, a handsome billionaire with dark secrets.
There were a lot of women there Friday night who appeared to be having "girls' night out". Many female patrons had worn their black boots and bits of leather in
homage to the BSDM theme of the books and some did bring their
own handcuffs, as suggested in the publicity. I saw a pink fuzzy pair pinned to the front of one young
lady's sweater like a brooch. Men were definitely in a minority shareholder position. My friend and I estimated the audience was 70% women and 30% men.
In this version of the story, a women's book club (Shelia O'Conner, Tiffany Dissette and Kim David who also plays the ditzy roomie Katherine with great aplomb) decides on "50 Shades..." as their book of the month, having ruled out, "Cooking Soup for One"(too depressing) and "The Diary of Anne Frank" (the ending was too sad). We come with them, so to speak, on their voyage of not-so-literary adventures.
"50 Shades..." is a grown-ups' version of of a Christmas pantomime, complete with sight-gag casting, singing and dancing and a loose and loud audience that felt free to shout suggestions ( "NO! take the hot
guy!") at critical moments during the performance.
Instead of the ugly step-sisters or the evil queen being played by some middle-aged man in bad drag, we have a Christian Grey (the hilarious Jack Boice) who looks more like Santa's red-haired kid brother than a love god. The delightful Boice would not be out of place at Bears' Night at the Black Eagle. It was a bit like expecting George Clooney and getting Ron Jeremy instead.
Happily for the patrons, his back-up dancers ( BJ Gruber, who is also a very hot Elliot Grey and Datus Puryear) more than had the good-looking man angle covered. The lovely Caroline Reade embodies Anastasia's "Inner Goddess" with some sultry tango dancing.
The entire cast is a talented bunch of singers, dancers and comedians with a great group dynamic and a lot of energy and charm. There was a certain amount of very cheeky engagement with the audience, especially by the show-stealing Boice in his big number "I Don't Make Love, I F...." and by O'Conner, the recently single housewife in the book club who tries to pick up a man in the front row.
There's a clever and well-performed Gilbert and Sullivan parody song detailing Christian's sexual interests. The whole script makes great sport of the absolute absurdity of the
books: "I love you and I want to beat the crap out of you". "I'm totally controlled and I feel so free!" At one point, our heroine (Eileen Patterson who is a sweet-voiced ingenue) flees Mr. Spanky-Pants by bailing out of his helicopter. I thought that was a great decision, but as is always the case in these things, love trumps sense and conquers all.
With a bare-bones set, a fine back-up band and a lot of hoary sexual jokes, this over-the-top silly and mildly subversive show is a feather-light entertainment. I hated the book ( I couldn't get through more than one) but this musical parody of a bad romance makes an enjoyable night out.
Then Saturday night, I went to see COCK at the new Theatre Centre. It's a fabulous space and I hope they never move again. They have taken in a few established independent theatre companies to share their new home and develop work. Studio 180 is one of those companies and this is their inaugural production in the new theatre.
COCK is a tight, tense and riveting story about a romantic triangle by Olivier award-winning British playwright Mike Bartlett.
John (well-played by Andrew Kushner) has spent seven years in a problematic live-in relationship with M (an excellent Jeff Miller), a somewhat older and intense man. John meets the forthright and attractive W (a nicely nuanced Jessica Greenberg) and they begin an affair. John has never slept with a woman before. Complications ensue. At on point, M's dad (a terrific Ian D. Clark) turns up to ask John two very good questions: "who are you?" and "what do you want?"
If I say much more, I'll spoil it. The script had the audience laughing and wincing in recognition.
I've dated guys like John once or twice. This play isn't so much about accepting a range of sexual preferences as it is about a nasty power game played by a passive-aggressive man with everyone around him.
A very wise friend of mine once said to me, "Any relationship is a decision and a commitment."
If you're at the "so, what are we doing here?" phase of your relationship, this could be a tense night out. If you both know who you are and what you want, it's a very good night of theatre. Certainly it is one of the best scripts I've seen on stage this year.
Finally, there was an absolute twitter-storm in the theatrical community in Toronto this week over "Conte D'Amour", the three hour durational performance art/theatre hybrid that was part of World Stage at Harbourfront this week. J. Kelly Nestruck, the Globe and Mail's main theatre critic, publicly declared he booed at the end of the performance. Lynne Slotkin, a well-regarded and excellent theatre blogger applauded his decision. After that, all hell broke loose.
I decided not to see or review the show.
Nestruck made one comment which I did want to weigh in on. He said the production was morally bankrupt. That remark was far more interesting to me than whether or not he booed at the end of the show.
Oscar Wilde famously said of literature that, "Books are neither moral nor immoral. They are simply well or badly written, that is all." Is this also true of theatre?
I agree with Wilde for the most part.
When I see work I dislike, it often feels lazy and unfinished. I feel insulted and ripped off because I paid money to and/or spent time with someone who hadn't cleaned up their thinking and their laziness showed up on stage. When a film or a play is really long, it often (but not always) is an indication of unfinished thinking.
Now, I was raised by old-school Catholics who taught me laziness is a sin and therefore immoral. Is this the kind of immorality under scrutiny here? Or is this about something else? Talk amongst yourselves.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
A Cool Encounter with DANCEMAKERS: "AROUND"
DANCEMAKERS is celebrating their 40th anniversary this season. AROUND is a new work built especially for this gala occasion.
The Distillery was just opening up when I left town for half a decade and I had never been in DANCEMAKERS new and incredibly beautiful space. Finding it was a bit of a challenge, even with the map. When I got there, I discovered a fabulous hidden venue.
For the performance, they had transformed one of their studios into a lobby/box office/bar with tunes, red carpets over the marley, vintage furniture and brocade upholstered benches that functioned as cocktail tables. They put out little snacks and offered people a free place to leave their coats. It's an intimate space with a cool yet friendly vibe, a portent of things to come. We were invited to drink in theatre during the performance.
The house opened and we were escorted into a white curtained studio/performance space in the round with a black marley on the floor and two mikes, one suspended and one on the floor, both corded. Two rows of chairs inside the white curtained area, tall ones at the back and low ones at the front meant we could see each other as well as we could see the performers. This device integrated and implicated the spectators in a different kind of complicity with the performance than the one provided by the more usual private sanctuary of a seat in the dark.
AROUND is devised, created through a process of improvising on the theme of encounters. The choreographer worked with five company members and five EDAP (emerging dance artist project) dancers to co-create this performance. Designers (sound, lights and costume) and a dramaturge were also involved heavily in the construction.
Everyone is in white. The curtains that contain the audience gets moved around so the parameters of the container are in flux. The work is visually, textually and aurally fairly austere. There's more movement than dance in any conventional sense. It is a cool show: edgy, self-consciously stylish and game.
Devised work is always a little loose. If you like rigour this isn't going to be your cup of tea. I thought there was an interesting mash-up of ideas playfully and provocatively executed. I liked that it demanded that I come half-way to meet the piece and the performers but I didn't always feel I was met in the middle.
I particularly liked a staring contest between two male dancers and the audience near the top of the show. The deconstruction of the nature of the gaze is an interesting thing to play with. A piece where sound score creator Christopher Willes joins the company onstage to play a white electric guitar with his head literally left blood on the floor. Coupled with the microphones stuffed into two of the male dancers' pants, it gave "cock rock" a whole new meaning.
This is dance walking on the edge of performance art. My encounter with AROUND was thought-provoking and blackly amusing but spoke more to more to my head than my heart. It certainly elicited some interesting conversations afterward outside the theatre.
DANCEMAKERS' AROUND continues until April 6th in their studio on the third floor of 9 TRINITY in the Distillery.
The Distillery was just opening up when I left town for half a decade and I had never been in DANCEMAKERS new and incredibly beautiful space. Finding it was a bit of a challenge, even with the map. When I got there, I discovered a fabulous hidden venue.
For the performance, they had transformed one of their studios into a lobby/box office/bar with tunes, red carpets over the marley, vintage furniture and brocade upholstered benches that functioned as cocktail tables. They put out little snacks and offered people a free place to leave their coats. It's an intimate space with a cool yet friendly vibe, a portent of things to come. We were invited to drink in theatre during the performance.
The house opened and we were escorted into a white curtained studio/performance space in the round with a black marley on the floor and two mikes, one suspended and one on the floor, both corded. Two rows of chairs inside the white curtained area, tall ones at the back and low ones at the front meant we could see each other as well as we could see the performers. This device integrated and implicated the spectators in a different kind of complicity with the performance than the one provided by the more usual private sanctuary of a seat in the dark.
AROUND is devised, created through a process of improvising on the theme of encounters. The choreographer worked with five company members and five EDAP (emerging dance artist project) dancers to co-create this performance. Designers (sound, lights and costume) and a dramaturge were also involved heavily in the construction.
Everyone is in white. The curtains that contain the audience gets moved around so the parameters of the container are in flux. The work is visually, textually and aurally fairly austere. There's more movement than dance in any conventional sense. It is a cool show: edgy, self-consciously stylish and game.
Devised work is always a little loose. If you like rigour this isn't going to be your cup of tea. I thought there was an interesting mash-up of ideas playfully and provocatively executed. I liked that it demanded that I come half-way to meet the piece and the performers but I didn't always feel I was met in the middle.
I particularly liked a staring contest between two male dancers and the audience near the top of the show. The deconstruction of the nature of the gaze is an interesting thing to play with. A piece where sound score creator Christopher Willes joins the company onstage to play a white electric guitar with his head literally left blood on the floor. Coupled with the microphones stuffed into two of the male dancers' pants, it gave "cock rock" a whole new meaning.
This is dance walking on the edge of performance art. My encounter with AROUND was thought-provoking and blackly amusing but spoke more to more to my head than my heart. It certainly elicited some interesting conversations afterward outside the theatre.
DANCEMAKERS' AROUND continues until April 6th in their studio on the third floor of 9 TRINITY in the Distillery.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Dance, Dance Evolution: EUGENE ONEGIN at The National Ballet & EUNOIA at WorldStage
I saw two very different nights of dance this past weekend: EUGENE ONEGIN, performed by THE NATIONAL BALLET OF CANADA at the Four Seasons Centre for The Performing Arts on Friday and EUNIOA by FUJIWARA DANCE INVENTIONS at WorldStage Theatre Festival in the EnWave Theatre at Harbourfront on Saturday night.
I've seen the opera based on the poem by Alexander Puskin a few times. It's a sentimental favourite as it was the first opera I ever saw performed live. I knew the ballet was performed using a different score than the opera, although still a score of music by Tchaikovsky.
Like Tatiana in Act III, I'm now much older than I was when my relationship with ONEGIN began. It has lost none of its power but now seems much less romantic to me and more tragic.
In Act I, Tatiana is a young, romantic girl, reading novels. What she knows of love and the world outside her country home comes from books. Her sister Olga, danced by a charming and vivacious Jillian Vanstone is engaged to a poet, Lensky danced by Naoya Ebe in a very promising debut. Lensky brings home a friend a sophisticated, urbane and trouble-making Onegin.
Onegin was wonderfully performed by Guillaume Cote on Friday night and he was marvelously matched by a spectacularly good Greta Hodgkinson as Tatiana. Both performances displayed stunningly good marriages of technique and emotion.
We all know someone like Onegin. He has a rich dad, he's a bit of a dandy, he's spoiled and too handsome for his own good. He loves sensation but is too shallow for complex emotion. He causes trouble because he can't stand not being the centre of attention and a hurricane with him at the vortex is a good way to hold the room. He trifles with girls' affections because he can.
He pays attention to Tatiana and Tatiana mistakes their shared interests in a larger world she's only experienced in books, for love. She throws herself at him the night before her birthday, writing him an impassioned letter.
Onegin not only spurns her, he flirts with her sister Olga shamelessly at Tatiana's birthday. He is bored at her party and rude to her widowed mother's guests, who are unaffected country people.
Lensky is so affronted by his friend's behaviour that he challenges Onegin to a duel. The girls beg Onegin to call it off. Lensky is killed and both Olga and Tatiana are left heartbroken. Onegin flees abroad.
Tatiana grows up, marries Prince Gremin, an older, distant cousin (elegantly executed by Etienne Lavinge) and lives happily in his palace with a man with whom she shares respect and love.
Many years later, Onegin returns from his exile abroad. The Prince receives him. Onegin is astonished to find Tatiana has become a beautiful and powerful woman. Finally overcome with sorrow and remorse, he declares his love to Tatiana in an impassioned letter and impatiently presses her to reciprocate. It is far too late. The grown Tatiana tells Onegin the truth: she loves him but she knows that love will only bring her misery. She sends him away, he goes and when he does she weeps painfully, fully and freely for everything they both lost.
The orchestra, chorus and design were as good as the principals, supporting and enhancing the story.
I loved the restrained palette of the design, especially the way the colors of the costumes were used to underscore the mood and emotions of the characters wearing them. Tatiana wears a white dress for her birthday and a brown one, sombre and autumnal, the day she sends Onegin packing.
The story in the beautiful poem was brought fully to life without a word being spoken. It is the great power of dance to be able to convey with the body, all the emotions underlying what is never said and felt by us all.
When Tatiana cried, so did I. Bravo to the National Ballet for a beautiful and moving performing.
Then Saturday night, I headed off to the Enwave Theatre for EUNOIA.
EUNOIA is a stage adaptation of a "univocal lipogram" (not univoweled?). Whatever: the well-known piece of literary cleverness by Governor General award-winning poet and language manipulator Christian Bok received a spirited and very charming stage production this weekend as part of WorldStage at Harbourfront.
The program contains very interesting notes from creator/choreographer Denise Fujiwara about her meticulous process with the dancers and designers. The result of the four-year collaboration was arch, delicate, droll and endearing.
I loved video designer Justin Stephenson's evocative manipulations and deconstructions of the text in projections.
The colour choices of costume designer Andjelija Djuric amplified the emotional tone of the five sections: A/E/I/O/U.
The dancers were some of the most highly regarded contemporary dance artists in the country: Sylvie Bouchard, Claudia Moore, Lucy Rupert, Miko Sobriera, Rebecca Hope Terry and Gerry Trentham. From the opening game of hang-man, they engaged the audience with ease and charm.
The piece required they speak a dense and difficult text while dancing, not an easy task. Dancers are not actors. They do not have the vocal muscularity and flexibility of those who speak for a living. Their voices required the amplification of a hand mike.
I loved all of their physical performances. I felt they did their best with the text which is not their metier. They brought great elegance to the awkward task of working with a hand mike during a dance performance. Phil Strong, sound designer and composer and the technical staff of the theatre controlled the levels of music and other sounds with skill and restraint.
The audience gave EUNOIA a loud and spontaneous standing ovation. It was well deserved by Denise and her cast and design team for executing a complex, protean task with sophistication, beauty and grace.
I've seen the opera based on the poem by Alexander Puskin a few times. It's a sentimental favourite as it was the first opera I ever saw performed live. I knew the ballet was performed using a different score than the opera, although still a score of music by Tchaikovsky.
Like Tatiana in Act III, I'm now much older than I was when my relationship with ONEGIN began. It has lost none of its power but now seems much less romantic to me and more tragic.
In Act I, Tatiana is a young, romantic girl, reading novels. What she knows of love and the world outside her country home comes from books. Her sister Olga, danced by a charming and vivacious Jillian Vanstone is engaged to a poet, Lensky danced by Naoya Ebe in a very promising debut. Lensky brings home a friend a sophisticated, urbane and trouble-making Onegin.
Onegin was wonderfully performed by Guillaume Cote on Friday night and he was marvelously matched by a spectacularly good Greta Hodgkinson as Tatiana. Both performances displayed stunningly good marriages of technique and emotion.
We all know someone like Onegin. He has a rich dad, he's a bit of a dandy, he's spoiled and too handsome for his own good. He loves sensation but is too shallow for complex emotion. He causes trouble because he can't stand not being the centre of attention and a hurricane with him at the vortex is a good way to hold the room. He trifles with girls' affections because he can.
He pays attention to Tatiana and Tatiana mistakes their shared interests in a larger world she's only experienced in books, for love. She throws herself at him the night before her birthday, writing him an impassioned letter.
Onegin not only spurns her, he flirts with her sister Olga shamelessly at Tatiana's birthday. He is bored at her party and rude to her widowed mother's guests, who are unaffected country people.
Lensky is so affronted by his friend's behaviour that he challenges Onegin to a duel. The girls beg Onegin to call it off. Lensky is killed and both Olga and Tatiana are left heartbroken. Onegin flees abroad.
Tatiana grows up, marries Prince Gremin, an older, distant cousin (elegantly executed by Etienne Lavinge) and lives happily in his palace with a man with whom she shares respect and love.
Many years later, Onegin returns from his exile abroad. The Prince receives him. Onegin is astonished to find Tatiana has become a beautiful and powerful woman. Finally overcome with sorrow and remorse, he declares his love to Tatiana in an impassioned letter and impatiently presses her to reciprocate. It is far too late. The grown Tatiana tells Onegin the truth: she loves him but she knows that love will only bring her misery. She sends him away, he goes and when he does she weeps painfully, fully and freely for everything they both lost.
The orchestra, chorus and design were as good as the principals, supporting and enhancing the story.
I loved the restrained palette of the design, especially the way the colors of the costumes were used to underscore the mood and emotions of the characters wearing them. Tatiana wears a white dress for her birthday and a brown one, sombre and autumnal, the day she sends Onegin packing.
The story in the beautiful poem was brought fully to life without a word being spoken. It is the great power of dance to be able to convey with the body, all the emotions underlying what is never said and felt by us all.
When Tatiana cried, so did I. Bravo to the National Ballet for a beautiful and moving performing.
Then Saturday night, I headed off to the Enwave Theatre for EUNOIA.
EUNOIA is a stage adaptation of a "univocal lipogram" (not univoweled?). Whatever: the well-known piece of literary cleverness by Governor General award-winning poet and language manipulator Christian Bok received a spirited and very charming stage production this weekend as part of WorldStage at Harbourfront.
The program contains very interesting notes from creator/choreographer Denise Fujiwara about her meticulous process with the dancers and designers. The result of the four-year collaboration was arch, delicate, droll and endearing.
I loved video designer Justin Stephenson's evocative manipulations and deconstructions of the text in projections.
The colour choices of costume designer Andjelija Djuric amplified the emotional tone of the five sections: A/E/I/O/U.
The dancers were some of the most highly regarded contemporary dance artists in the country: Sylvie Bouchard, Claudia Moore, Lucy Rupert, Miko Sobriera, Rebecca Hope Terry and Gerry Trentham. From the opening game of hang-man, they engaged the audience with ease and charm.
The piece required they speak a dense and difficult text while dancing, not an easy task. Dancers are not actors. They do not have the vocal muscularity and flexibility of those who speak for a living. Their voices required the amplification of a hand mike.
I loved all of their physical performances. I felt they did their best with the text which is not their metier. They brought great elegance to the awkward task of working with a hand mike during a dance performance. Phil Strong, sound designer and composer and the technical staff of the theatre controlled the levels of music and other sounds with skill and restraint.
The audience gave EUNOIA a loud and spontaneous standing ovation. It was well deserved by Denise and her cast and design team for executing a complex, protean task with sophistication, beauty and grace.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
Mommy Issues: 6 Essential Questions At The Factory Theatre
This week was the first time I've seen a mainstage show at the Factory since the still sitting board unceremoniously fired the theatre's founding artistic director, Ken Gass.
I had attended the Fringe and NextStage there. I support the Fringe and I was willing to move the boundary line that far.
Then friends self-produced in the Factory Studio this winter and after some thought, I decided to support them. The show, "OF MICE AND MORRO AND JASP" was a marvel: beautifully acted, intelligently and sensitively written and tightly directed. I laughed and cried. It was one of the high points of the winter theatre season for me.
Then someone gave me a ticket to see Ronnie Burkett and I went with a friend and it was fabulous, as it had been at LUMINATO back in June. Funny, moving, naughty, edgy: I had a second great night at the Factory.
Then, Volcano produced a MacIvor play in the studio and I bought a ticket to A BEAUTIFUL VIEW and went with another friend. It is not my favourite play of his, although he is one of my favourite playwrights but it was thought-provoking and affecting, a well-acted, well-directed production.
I tweeted about most of those shows. I didn't write about them here because I saw them late into short runs and didn't think it was useful.
Then, a friend invited me to join her for 6 ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS this week. She and I catch a few shows together over a season. She is a thoughtful person and a talented theatre artist.
When we last saw a show together earlier this winter and I told her I was still boycotting the Factory, she asked me a hard question: "Are we going to let the Factory die over this? Do you really think that's the right thing to do?"
The answer to that question, after some thought, was no. I hate that the board is still in place. The new lobby looks like the garage that belonged to the friend's dad in FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF
(sans Ferrari or bucolic view). The elevator does not go to the top floor (seriously) meaning the vaunted "access" is for audiences, not artists who still need to climb a flight of stairs to the rehearsal hall on the top floor.
Still, I agree that the Factory Theatre is an important cultural institution in this city and no, I don't want to see it die.
So off I went to see the first play by a well-regarded Canadian woman writer and academic, Prisila Uppal. Her book, PROJECTION: ENCOUNTERS WITH MY RUN-AWAY MOTHER was nominated for a Governor General's Award for non-fiction. The material in that book forms the basis for her play, 6 ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS.
Professor Uppal has not adapted her smart, well-written, well-structured, lyrical and poignant book to the stage. Instead, she has chosen to use some of the material in the book as a jumping-off point for a "theatrical" interpretation of the story about her attempt to reconnect with her run-away mother twenty years after that mother abandoned her, her brother and her quadriplegic father in Ottawa. The daughter hasn't seen her mother in twenty years. The mother now lives in Brazil and has cancer. Both mother and daughter are writers and academics.
The book just churns out story: memorable characters, action that speaks to character and drives conflict. It has all the makings of a great play or feature film.
Unfortunately, almost none of that makes it to the stage. There's some beautiful language here, but it takes more than poetry to make a play. The play tries for some kind of magic realism but ends up a mostly incoherent mess.
6 ESSENTIAL... does not create engaging characters in believable relationships or escalate story stakes with action in any way that allows the audience to connect with the material.
Director Leah Cherniak's decision to pitch this as a loose and loud clown show does neither the actors or the play any favours. Renata (Mina James in an utterly thankless part) our heroine is presented as a bland bourgeois foil, an MD in the histrionic freak show of her family. Richard Zeppieri (Uncle Garbage) and Maggie Huculak (Grandmother) do their best, but Elizabeth Saunders' talent is wasted in an irritating, over-the-top performance as Renata's narcissistic Mother. Much of the frenetic physical action, rather than being inherent to character, ends up feeling imposed on the amorphous text.
Like the direction, the acting and the script, the set is messy and unfocused, unnecessarily busy for no apparent reason. I loved the projections, but disliked both the costumes and the rubbish set.
It's an 80 minute show and by the 30 minute mark, I was looking at my watch.
By the time the play tells any story or creates any credible conflict between the characters, I had been so beat up by the pitch of the production and the performances and so frustrated with and stymied by the disjointed writing, I was just numb, irritated and wanted it to be over. I didn't care about any of them.
Uppal was right about one thing: some dreams are meant to die.
This play should never have been put on stage at a major theatre in this state. This production is a shoddy disservice to a great book that tells an incredible story.
One of the two artistic directors or dramaturges at the Factory should have put their foot down when this was still in development. There are plenty of skilled playwrights experienced at literary adaptations in town who could have made the book into an electrifying script. Sorry Professor, this is an epic fail.
Hopefully, the next show at the Factory Mainstage is better.
I had attended the Fringe and NextStage there. I support the Fringe and I was willing to move the boundary line that far.
Then friends self-produced in the Factory Studio this winter and after some thought, I decided to support them. The show, "OF MICE AND MORRO AND JASP" was a marvel: beautifully acted, intelligently and sensitively written and tightly directed. I laughed and cried. It was one of the high points of the winter theatre season for me.
Then someone gave me a ticket to see Ronnie Burkett and I went with a friend and it was fabulous, as it had been at LUMINATO back in June. Funny, moving, naughty, edgy: I had a second great night at the Factory.
Then, Volcano produced a MacIvor play in the studio and I bought a ticket to A BEAUTIFUL VIEW and went with another friend. It is not my favourite play of his, although he is one of my favourite playwrights but it was thought-provoking and affecting, a well-acted, well-directed production.
I tweeted about most of those shows. I didn't write about them here because I saw them late into short runs and didn't think it was useful.
Then, a friend invited me to join her for 6 ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS this week. She and I catch a few shows together over a season. She is a thoughtful person and a talented theatre artist.
When we last saw a show together earlier this winter and I told her I was still boycotting the Factory, she asked me a hard question: "Are we going to let the Factory die over this? Do you really think that's the right thing to do?"
The answer to that question, after some thought, was no. I hate that the board is still in place. The new lobby looks like the garage that belonged to the friend's dad in FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF
(sans Ferrari or bucolic view). The elevator does not go to the top floor (seriously) meaning the vaunted "access" is for audiences, not artists who still need to climb a flight of stairs to the rehearsal hall on the top floor.
Still, I agree that the Factory Theatre is an important cultural institution in this city and no, I don't want to see it die.
So off I went to see the first play by a well-regarded Canadian woman writer and academic, Prisila Uppal. Her book, PROJECTION: ENCOUNTERS WITH MY RUN-AWAY MOTHER was nominated for a Governor General's Award for non-fiction. The material in that book forms the basis for her play, 6 ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS.
Professor Uppal has not adapted her smart, well-written, well-structured, lyrical and poignant book to the stage. Instead, she has chosen to use some of the material in the book as a jumping-off point for a "theatrical" interpretation of the story about her attempt to reconnect with her run-away mother twenty years after that mother abandoned her, her brother and her quadriplegic father in Ottawa. The daughter hasn't seen her mother in twenty years. The mother now lives in Brazil and has cancer. Both mother and daughter are writers and academics.
The book just churns out story: memorable characters, action that speaks to character and drives conflict. It has all the makings of a great play or feature film.
Unfortunately, almost none of that makes it to the stage. There's some beautiful language here, but it takes more than poetry to make a play. The play tries for some kind of magic realism but ends up a mostly incoherent mess.
6 ESSENTIAL... does not create engaging characters in believable relationships or escalate story stakes with action in any way that allows the audience to connect with the material.
The script suffers from a classic problem of first scripts by inexperienced playwrights. The protagonist does not drive the action of the play.
Director Leah Cherniak's decision to pitch this as a loose and loud clown show does neither the actors or the play any favours. Renata (Mina James in an utterly thankless part) our heroine is presented as a bland bourgeois foil, an MD in the histrionic freak show of her family. Richard Zeppieri (Uncle Garbage) and Maggie Huculak (Grandmother) do their best, but Elizabeth Saunders' talent is wasted in an irritating, over-the-top performance as Renata's narcissistic Mother. Much of the frenetic physical action, rather than being inherent to character, ends up feeling imposed on the amorphous text.
Like the direction, the acting and the script, the set is messy and unfocused, unnecessarily busy for no apparent reason. I loved the projections, but disliked both the costumes and the rubbish set.
It's an 80 minute show and by the 30 minute mark, I was looking at my watch.
By the time the play tells any story or creates any credible conflict between the characters, I had been so beat up by the pitch of the production and the performances and so frustrated with and stymied by the disjointed writing, I was just numb, irritated and wanted it to be over. I didn't care about any of them.
Uppal freely quotes Dickens without crediting him. Would she had absorbed some lessons in story structure and character creation from him.
You can make all kinds of magic happen in a theatre, as Dickens knew well.
I have experienced some powerful stage magic at the Factory this winter. A clown in a red nose accidentally killed a wind-up dog and I wept with her. When her sister slid up the stairs with a battered suitcase to find them somewhere else to go after a disaster, in one pause, one hunched shoulder, one tiny sigh, I felt her love for her sister and the crushing burden of taking care of someone who is totally out of control. A puppet named after an entree with a flower growing out of his head made my heart soar on the wings he wants and doesn't have, except in his heart.
Great theatre isn't about reality: it's about naked emotional truth. To make great theatre you need to make me feel your feelings and dream your dreams.
You can make all kinds of magic happen in a theatre, as Dickens knew well.
I have experienced some powerful stage magic at the Factory this winter. A clown in a red nose accidentally killed a wind-up dog and I wept with her. When her sister slid up the stairs with a battered suitcase to find them somewhere else to go after a disaster, in one pause, one hunched shoulder, one tiny sigh, I felt her love for her sister and the crushing burden of taking care of someone who is totally out of control. A puppet named after an entree with a flower growing out of his head made my heart soar on the wings he wants and doesn't have, except in his heart.
Great theatre isn't about reality: it's about naked emotional truth. To make great theatre you need to make me feel your feelings and dream your dreams.
This play should never have been put on stage at a major theatre in this state. This production is a shoddy disservice to a great book that tells an incredible story.
One of the two artistic directors or dramaturges at the Factory should have put their foot down when this was still in development. There are plenty of skilled playwrights experienced at literary adaptations in town who could have made the book into an electrifying script. Sorry Professor, this is an epic fail.
Hopefully, the next show at the Factory Mainstage is better.
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
METAMORPHOSIS at THE ROYAL ALEX
It's always exciting to walk through the foyer of the Alex and hand your ticket over to one of those gracious, elegant gentlemen at the front of the interior doors to the lobby in their tuxedos and long black coats. Every aspect of entering the theatre suggests you are about to be part of something special.
I was not disappointed last week.
"One morning, when Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin."
So begins Franz Kafka's surreal novel, written in 1915, at the beginning of the First World War.
In this brilliant production, Gregor's awful transformation heightens rather than diminishes his humanity. Damaged, confused, afraid and scarily vulnerable, he becomes an everyman of scorned frailty and repellant otherness.
As Gregor, the astonishing Bjorn Thors spends most of the performance literally climbing the walls of the bedroom that becomes his prison.
His room is presented from the start from a skewed perspective: the floor of the room is the back wall. The downstairs of the house is a typical proscenium box set. The aesthetic dissonance mirrors the difference between Gregor's experience of reality as a bewildered and suffering human and others' experience of him as a despised freak.
One by one, his own family: father, (Tom Mannion) mother, (Edda Arnljotsdottir) and sister, (Unnar Osp Stefansdottir) turn on him. Gregor becomes their curse: a source of extra work, a drain on their limited resources, an object of escalating disgust, shame and embarrassment. Their precarious middle class aspirations teeter on keeping his existence a dirty secret. Their escalating revulsion and viciousness towards their son, brother and former breadwinner is both utterly horrifying and completely believable.
Gregor's sanctuary, his room, becomes his cell and then his coffin, all at the hands of the people he loves. How does this happen?
I thought about Phoenix Sinclair and Jeffery Baldwin, Canadian children who were starved and beaten to death in Canada under the watchful eye of social service agencies while in the care and custody of their own families. No one noticed or intervened. What happens to Gregor happens to someone, somewhere, at home or in care, every single day.
Five actors, one set and a stylized, intelligent and physically rigorous production does more in 90 uninterrupted minutes to examine and illuminate human cruelty visited upon the vulnerable in a domestic enclave than any coroner's inquest.
The European cast performing in English is uniformly fine, with Thor giving the stand-out performance. The score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis enhances the production without ever intruding.
The much-admired production of an excellent adaptation of Franz Kafka's METAMORPHOSIS is certain to become one of the most talked about productions of this Toronto theatre season. David Farr of the RSC and Gisli Orn Gardarsson from Iceland's Ventursport Theatre have achieved that rare feat of making dynamic and engaging theatre out of a challenging work of literature. They are faithful to the absurdity and black humour of the book without abandoning its heart.
Go: and bug someone to come with you. You'll have a lot talk about after the show.
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Next Stage Theatre Festival - The Winter Fringe
An event I happily anticipate opened late last week: THE NEXT STAGE THEATRE FESTIVAL which is hosted on the premises of the Factory Theatre.
The FRINGE of TORONTO produces the juried festival. The plays on offer are made by people who have previously produced or performed at the Fringe. It feels less manic than the summer outing with only 10 shows and one handy site. At $10-$15 a ticket, the festival offers a great post-holiday theatre bargain.
The range of work is a good representation of what you might see at the Fringe: two musicals, one a genre parody and one an adaptation of Chekhov (!), a clown/buffoon show, a monologue by a young man, a adaptation of a play by a famous playwright, a show about the Second World War and Holocaust survivors, a naughty literary adaptation based on a famous book and revivals of a few hit shows from previous Fringes.
All the performances take place within the confines of the Factory, using its usual two venues, the 100 seat studio, the 200 seat Mainspace and the Antechamber which is really the upstairs theatre bar with 39 chairs placed in it and the bar-rail turned into the tech booth.
The drinking, socializing and ticket sales for the festival take place in a cosy, heated, outdoor tent in the courtyard of the Factory with music and a bar with hot chocolate, hot toddies and, of course, beer.
I love the tent. My only wish was that they had killed the interrogation-bright overheads and just used the fairy/Christmas lights but I expect the brightness was for safety considerations. Theatre patrons these days seem to be, in the main, under 30 or well over 60. On an icy, dark winter weekend the light was needed to navigate the stairs outside.
I saw four shows this past weekend: SCHEHERAZADE by Nobody's Business Theatre, FATHERLY by monologist, Sam Mullins, RIFLES adapted from Brecht by Governor General award winner Nicholas Billion and POLAR OPPOSITES a mask-buffoon piece by TiltHAUS.
SCHEHERAZADE is a GGG (syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage's "good, giving and game") take on the fascinating and unwieldy 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS, one of the most famous texts in literature. The stories have their origins in 7-9th century Persia, Saudi Arabia and India.
Here, writer Johnnie Walker transposes the ancient tales onto a very modern, mediated world of broadcasted weddings, on-demand porn and commodified marriage. The slick production makes great use of both visual intertexts projected onto a screen and wicked humour to bring to life the pathos and terror of a universe where a very few rich men rule, appearances count, and everyone contorts and adapts to being constantly seen but rarely heard. I found the production arch, sexy and really fun with a uniformly great cast of eleven talented actors and sharp, stylish direction. At the beginning, and in the end, it is also quite moving. The script could use a little pruning and shaping, but as it stands, it is well worth seeing.
Then, I had a classically great Fringe experience, Sam Mullins' FATHERLY. Mullins is a wonderful, charming and natural storyteller and his tale of baseball and his dad was both affecting and engaging. It left me wanting more. He's in the tiny Antechamber. Book early: he'll sell out.
POLAR OPPOSITES makes impressively creative use of the same tiny space, positioning two "bears" on ladders and using a gorgeous soundscape and ping-pong balls (you have to be there) to create a very atmospheric yet existentialist take on the lives of two hungry creatures in a rapidly shrinking universe. This play owes as much to Beckett as it does to mask/buffoon. The charm of the performances and the inventiveness of the production make it worth a look.
RIFLES by PRAXIS THEATRE is a challenging and compelling adaptation of Brecht's SENORA CARRAR'S RIFLES. The writer of the adaptation, Nicholas Billon, just won the Governor General's Award for his trilogy, FAULT LINES. If this is any indication of what his work is usually like, I'm glued. Michael Wheeler did a great job of directing his wonderful cast as they drag through the moral quagmire of the Spanish Civil War. I loved this. The hard questions it raises remained with me long after I'd gone home and turned on the news to see a world that hasn't changed much in some ways since 1937.
I understand shows are selling out, but don't let that deter you. I got into everything I wanted to see last weekend by going down early Friday and buying my tickets for the weekend in one go. It's usually possible to get in on a weekday night or by booking in advance. Arrive early and enjoy a hot chocolate or a hot toddy in the beer tent. It really is a wonderful festival of independent theatre in a lovely and lively venue. The Next Stage Festival runs at the Factory Theatre until January19th.
The FRINGE of TORONTO produces the juried festival. The plays on offer are made by people who have previously produced or performed at the Fringe. It feels less manic than the summer outing with only 10 shows and one handy site. At $10-$15 a ticket, the festival offers a great post-holiday theatre bargain.
The range of work is a good representation of what you might see at the Fringe: two musicals, one a genre parody and one an adaptation of Chekhov (!), a clown/buffoon show, a monologue by a young man, a adaptation of a play by a famous playwright, a show about the Second World War and Holocaust survivors, a naughty literary adaptation based on a famous book and revivals of a few hit shows from previous Fringes.
All the performances take place within the confines of the Factory, using its usual two venues, the 100 seat studio, the 200 seat Mainspace and the Antechamber which is really the upstairs theatre bar with 39 chairs placed in it and the bar-rail turned into the tech booth.
The drinking, socializing and ticket sales for the festival take place in a cosy, heated, outdoor tent in the courtyard of the Factory with music and a bar with hot chocolate, hot toddies and, of course, beer.
I love the tent. My only wish was that they had killed the interrogation-bright overheads and just used the fairy/Christmas lights but I expect the brightness was for safety considerations. Theatre patrons these days seem to be, in the main, under 30 or well over 60. On an icy, dark winter weekend the light was needed to navigate the stairs outside.
I saw four shows this past weekend: SCHEHERAZADE by Nobody's Business Theatre, FATHERLY by monologist, Sam Mullins, RIFLES adapted from Brecht by Governor General award winner Nicholas Billion and POLAR OPPOSITES a mask-buffoon piece by TiltHAUS.
SCHEHERAZADE is a GGG (syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage's "good, giving and game") take on the fascinating and unwieldy 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS, one of the most famous texts in literature. The stories have their origins in 7-9th century Persia, Saudi Arabia and India.
Here, writer Johnnie Walker transposes the ancient tales onto a very modern, mediated world of broadcasted weddings, on-demand porn and commodified marriage. The slick production makes great use of both visual intertexts projected onto a screen and wicked humour to bring to life the pathos and terror of a universe where a very few rich men rule, appearances count, and everyone contorts and adapts to being constantly seen but rarely heard. I found the production arch, sexy and really fun with a uniformly great cast of eleven talented actors and sharp, stylish direction. At the beginning, and in the end, it is also quite moving. The script could use a little pruning and shaping, but as it stands, it is well worth seeing.
Then, I had a classically great Fringe experience, Sam Mullins' FATHERLY. Mullins is a wonderful, charming and natural storyteller and his tale of baseball and his dad was both affecting and engaging. It left me wanting more. He's in the tiny Antechamber. Book early: he'll sell out.
POLAR OPPOSITES makes impressively creative use of the same tiny space, positioning two "bears" on ladders and using a gorgeous soundscape and ping-pong balls (you have to be there) to create a very atmospheric yet existentialist take on the lives of two hungry creatures in a rapidly shrinking universe. This play owes as much to Beckett as it does to mask/buffoon. The charm of the performances and the inventiveness of the production make it worth a look.
RIFLES by PRAXIS THEATRE is a challenging and compelling adaptation of Brecht's SENORA CARRAR'S RIFLES. The writer of the adaptation, Nicholas Billon, just won the Governor General's Award for his trilogy, FAULT LINES. If this is any indication of what his work is usually like, I'm glued. Michael Wheeler did a great job of directing his wonderful cast as they drag through the moral quagmire of the Spanish Civil War. I loved this. The hard questions it raises remained with me long after I'd gone home and turned on the news to see a world that hasn't changed much in some ways since 1937.
I understand shows are selling out, but don't let that deter you. I got into everything I wanted to see last weekend by going down early Friday and buying my tickets for the weekend in one go. It's usually possible to get in on a weekday night or by booking in advance. Arrive early and enjoy a hot chocolate or a hot toddy in the beer tent. It really is a wonderful festival of independent theatre in a lovely and lively venue. The Next Stage Festival runs at the Factory Theatre until January19th.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
A Week at the Movies: DALLAS BUYERS CLUB and SHAME
The Holiday period is officially over.
The remains of the ham is now pea soup, and meat slabs in the freezer. The tree is still up but my Mom is Ukrainian and that means it is Ukrainian Christmas this week, allowing me to extend certain seasonal pleasures by a few more days.
Next week, NEXT STAGE Theatre Festival opens and the winter theatre season begins.
The snowy season around New Year's always seems like the perfect time to head into a cinema or to Queen Video and rent a movie. This past weekend, I did both.
A filmmaker friend and I went to see THE DALLAS BUYERS CLUB on Friday night at the Carlton.
I'd been there earlier this year for the first time since I got back to Toronto and it was great. It was packed, someone was playing the piano and it was possible to have wine and popcorn while watching the film, just like I would if I was curled up on the sofa under an afghan at home. The Carlton is quite a bit cheaper than the Varsity and the screens are certainly not smaller than the ones in the so-called VIP theatres at that venue. The Varsity, like TIFF, often shows films you can't see elsewhere in town, but I always feel like I'm paying a Yorkville price for the same service I could get for less elsewhere. The Carlton will be getting more of my movie money this year.
Enough about the amenities, on to the film.
DALLAS BUYERS' CLUB features Matthew McConaughey in the role of a white trash, party-boy bull rider and electrician, Ron Woodruff. The film begins with a foursome in a bull-pen having sex while watching bucking bulls through the slats. It's a tawdry bacchanal with devastating consequences. Weeks later, Ron is diagnosed with AIDS. His T-cell count is 9. It's 1985 and AIDS drugs are at a clinical trial stage in the U.S. The doctor tells him he has a month to live.
This begins a fight for survival that changes Ron's self-destructive, red-neck, homophobic life. Used to buying and selling illegal drugs (mostly cocaine) Ron turns his talents for scoring dope into a hunt for HIV treatment drugs south of the border and eventually, globally. He finds unlikely allies in a young female physician and an HIV-positive, smart, self-destructive drag queen named Rayon ( Jared Leto in a star turn).
One of my favourite scenes in the film is the first night Rayon actually drags Woodruff into a gay bar. As he sits at the bar watching Rayon bump and grind with some guy in cowboy gear, Ron realizes people are just dancing, drinking, scoring, flirting, getting high and having a few laughs like they would in any other club.
I liked this film a lot. I was reminded of many friends of mine, long-dead, who suffered through crap drug trials and horrible side effects as they fought for their lives. Director Jean Marc La Vallee does not gloss over anything about that period in history: not its homophobia, nor the self-destructive, common-place use and abuse of street drugs and casual unprotected sex, straight and gay. He also shows the power the FDA and Big Pharma have in the lives of desperately ill people.
HIV/AIDS is now treatable: with very expensive drugs that are not easy to obtain or afford in much of the world. There is still no cure. The fight is not over yet.
Gay and straight, we need to stand together to battle HIV/AIDS world-wide. This film was a great reminder of the brutal start to a long battle that's still ongoing.
Then, last night, I rented the Steve McQueen film, SHAME.
I'd avoided the picture for a long time. Earlier this week, I saw a documentary on the CBC that said habit and addiction exist on a continuum: that is to say, they are a matter of degree. At one end, there's the cup of coffee I have every morning first thing. I always quit at two. Coffee is a habit of mine. On the other end there's addiction: that awful, unstoppable, run-away freight train of compulsion, self-loathing, self-destruction and regret. I think most of us know it when we see it and some of us know it because we've been there ourselves or with loved ones.
Does sex addiction exist? I don't know. It's gone off and on the various editions of the DSM. Can sex be as nihilistic, debasing, self-destructive and compulsive as drugs or alcohol? You bet.
Michael Fassbinder gives an astonishing performance as Brandon, a man for whom getting off: with hook-ups, prostitutes, on-line masturbating to porn, in chat rooms or alone in toilet stalls and showers has become a compulsion. He goes to work, he eats take-out or in restaurants, he has sex, he showers, he sleeps.
He's functioning: he has a job, money, an apartment. He also has an utterly empty life, as blank a void as the white walls of his high-rise apartment. He likes sex from behind, in bathhouses, in dark alleys with strangers, anonymous and faceless.
Then his sister (Carrie Mulligan in a terrific performance) Sissy, an unemployed musician, homeless after a break-up, shows up on his doorstep. She's one aching hole of neediness, pain and self-destruction. She's the mirror held up the void of Brandon's life: the visceral embodiment of everything he's too afraid to allow himself to feel and the mess he fears will follow if he does.
We see Brandon once on a date with a colleague he actually likes. He can't order dinner. He can barely speak. When he tries to make love to her, he can't perform. His terror of engulfment is so overwhelming, rage is the only emotion he allows himself to feel.
His sister's clinging and neediness is unbearable. Pushing her out of his home only serves to bring down the reign of emotional chaos he fears more than life itself. Brandon goes on a self-destructive sex bender as Sissy goes off an emotional cliff.
The film is a great character study and an unflinching look at sex as a drug, a self-soothing commodity capable of bringing pleasure and pain in equal measure.
SHAME offers no pat solutions, no happy ending, no easy answers. It's not an easy film to watch, but it is well worth seeing.
It's a time of year when many of us determine to change our habits whatever they are. This year, among other things, I'm going to try to see more movies and try write here more often. We'll see how I do. Happy New Year! May you acquire only good habits in 2014.
The remains of the ham is now pea soup, and meat slabs in the freezer. The tree is still up but my Mom is Ukrainian and that means it is Ukrainian Christmas this week, allowing me to extend certain seasonal pleasures by a few more days.
Next week, NEXT STAGE Theatre Festival opens and the winter theatre season begins.
The snowy season around New Year's always seems like the perfect time to head into a cinema or to Queen Video and rent a movie. This past weekend, I did both.
A filmmaker friend and I went to see THE DALLAS BUYERS CLUB on Friday night at the Carlton.
I'd been there earlier this year for the first time since I got back to Toronto and it was great. It was packed, someone was playing the piano and it was possible to have wine and popcorn while watching the film, just like I would if I was curled up on the sofa under an afghan at home. The Carlton is quite a bit cheaper than the Varsity and the screens are certainly not smaller than the ones in the so-called VIP theatres at that venue. The Varsity, like TIFF, often shows films you can't see elsewhere in town, but I always feel like I'm paying a Yorkville price for the same service I could get for less elsewhere. The Carlton will be getting more of my movie money this year.
Enough about the amenities, on to the film.
DALLAS BUYERS' CLUB features Matthew McConaughey in the role of a white trash, party-boy bull rider and electrician, Ron Woodruff. The film begins with a foursome in a bull-pen having sex while watching bucking bulls through the slats. It's a tawdry bacchanal with devastating consequences. Weeks later, Ron is diagnosed with AIDS. His T-cell count is 9. It's 1985 and AIDS drugs are at a clinical trial stage in the U.S. The doctor tells him he has a month to live.
This begins a fight for survival that changes Ron's self-destructive, red-neck, homophobic life. Used to buying and selling illegal drugs (mostly cocaine) Ron turns his talents for scoring dope into a hunt for HIV treatment drugs south of the border and eventually, globally. He finds unlikely allies in a young female physician and an HIV-positive, smart, self-destructive drag queen named Rayon ( Jared Leto in a star turn).
One of my favourite scenes in the film is the first night Rayon actually drags Woodruff into a gay bar. As he sits at the bar watching Rayon bump and grind with some guy in cowboy gear, Ron realizes people are just dancing, drinking, scoring, flirting, getting high and having a few laughs like they would in any other club.
I liked this film a lot. I was reminded of many friends of mine, long-dead, who suffered through crap drug trials and horrible side effects as they fought for their lives. Director Jean Marc La Vallee does not gloss over anything about that period in history: not its homophobia, nor the self-destructive, common-place use and abuse of street drugs and casual unprotected sex, straight and gay. He also shows the power the FDA and Big Pharma have in the lives of desperately ill people.
HIV/AIDS is now treatable: with very expensive drugs that are not easy to obtain or afford in much of the world. There is still no cure. The fight is not over yet.
Gay and straight, we need to stand together to battle HIV/AIDS world-wide. This film was a great reminder of the brutal start to a long battle that's still ongoing.
Then, last night, I rented the Steve McQueen film, SHAME.
I'd avoided the picture for a long time. Earlier this week, I saw a documentary on the CBC that said habit and addiction exist on a continuum: that is to say, they are a matter of degree. At one end, there's the cup of coffee I have every morning first thing. I always quit at two. Coffee is a habit of mine. On the other end there's addiction: that awful, unstoppable, run-away freight train of compulsion, self-loathing, self-destruction and regret. I think most of us know it when we see it and some of us know it because we've been there ourselves or with loved ones.
Does sex addiction exist? I don't know. It's gone off and on the various editions of the DSM. Can sex be as nihilistic, debasing, self-destructive and compulsive as drugs or alcohol? You bet.
Michael Fassbinder gives an astonishing performance as Brandon, a man for whom getting off: with hook-ups, prostitutes, on-line masturbating to porn, in chat rooms or alone in toilet stalls and showers has become a compulsion. He goes to work, he eats take-out or in restaurants, he has sex, he showers, he sleeps.
He's functioning: he has a job, money, an apartment. He also has an utterly empty life, as blank a void as the white walls of his high-rise apartment. He likes sex from behind, in bathhouses, in dark alleys with strangers, anonymous and faceless.
Then his sister (Carrie Mulligan in a terrific performance) Sissy, an unemployed musician, homeless after a break-up, shows up on his doorstep. She's one aching hole of neediness, pain and self-destruction. She's the mirror held up the void of Brandon's life: the visceral embodiment of everything he's too afraid to allow himself to feel and the mess he fears will follow if he does.
We see Brandon once on a date with a colleague he actually likes. He can't order dinner. He can barely speak. When he tries to make love to her, he can't perform. His terror of engulfment is so overwhelming, rage is the only emotion he allows himself to feel.
His sister's clinging and neediness is unbearable. Pushing her out of his home only serves to bring down the reign of emotional chaos he fears more than life itself. Brandon goes on a self-destructive sex bender as Sissy goes off an emotional cliff.
The film is a great character study and an unflinching look at sex as a drug, a self-soothing commodity capable of bringing pleasure and pain in equal measure.
SHAME offers no pat solutions, no happy ending, no easy answers. It's not an easy film to watch, but it is well worth seeing.
It's a time of year when many of us determine to change our habits whatever they are. This year, among other things, I'm going to try to see more movies and try write here more often. We'll see how I do. Happy New Year! May you acquire only good habits in 2014.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)