THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE  THIS WEEK'S TRIBUNE Bring open mind, clear head, sense of adventure to enjoy play
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Bring open mind, clear head, sense of adventure to enjoy play |
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Written by Barbara Shainbaum
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Tuesday, 24 November 2009 |
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TORONTO – Last March, I attended the book launch of Adam Seelig’s new play, Talking Masks. Seelig, a playwright, poet, stage director and founder and artistic director of One Little Goat Theatre Company, told me cryptically when I interviewed him that it was about “nothing and nothingness,” combining two foundational myths – the Biblical/Koranic tales of half-brothers Isaac and Ishmael and the Oedipus myth of Ancient Greece, central to dramatic literature – to create a powerful meditation on the nature of blessings and curses.
Oedipussy, the play’s tongue-in-cheek subtitle, refers to “the son figure who is a new embodiment of Oedipus and Isaac and to some extent Ishmael too,” Seelig explained. Both myths involve blessings and curses: Isaac receives his blessings after being bound and cursed in that fashion. Ishmael receives his blessing after being abandoned in the desert and his mother cries out for help. It’s the moment where the curse reaches its most extreme point, the blessing comes. Oedipus goes through his life blessed to become a king, to solve the riddle of the sphinx, to lead a nation. That’s also his curse because the problems of doing so lead him to marry his mother. When things are going best for Oedipus, they couldn’t be worse, unbeknownst to him. The two sides of the blessings/curse coin these two myths have in common work so well together.”
Last week, I attended the performance of Talking Masks, directed by Seelig. It’s clever, at times poetic and rhythmic, experimental, intellectually stimulating and wordplays are definitely his forte, but too many things were yoked and mixed together in rapid-fire succession in such a cerebral way (myths, Shakespeare, romantic poets and contemporary references) that after a point it became difficult to absorb what was happening dramatically and emotionally.
“Issues of fate and family are bantered about on stage. ‘Characters’ combine the actors’ offscreen nature with their onstage persona,” the press release asserts.
The cast’s four actors, Richard Harte, Andrew Moodie, Jane Miller, and Cathy Murphy, work hard stretching themselves to give dramatic form and emotional content to Seelig’s wild and playful stream of consciousness and wordplay associations. Some vignettes work, others don’t.
The shifting ‘character’ of the son (Richard Harte) at the centre morphs from baby in a diaper to a rebellious teenager in a toga. He’s obsessed with his penis, both in the Jewish biblical and Greek Oedipal way, encapsulating Freudian angst and rage, fending off the Biblical/Koranic mothers’ and the Greek Oedipus mother’s lust. Because the son switches into three roles he really doesn’t develop as a character. (Maybe he’s not supposed to.) Although I laughed at times, I thought Seelig could have gone further with the bris scene for Isaac.
The man on a horse (Andrew Moodie), an absent yet domineering father-figure full of machismo, harasses and cajoles the son. Moodie has a powerful stage presence that was unfortunately underused because of his short time on stage during the play’s first part.
The two mother types (Jane Miller and Cathy Murphy), posed on pedestals in retro dresses and wigs, approximate the son’s Biblical/Koranic mothers, Sarah and Hagar, combined with Oedipus’s Greek mother Jocasta (and a dash of modern women too).
Their voices, alternating between shrill maternal demands and supplicating pleas, hint at an inevitable fate. They’re dramatic but not deep. Their period costumes by Jackie Chau, though, are eye-catching.
The shifting characters spew forth dizzying verbal pyrotechnics about fathers, sons, mothers, horses, life, death, masturbation and circumcision, with overlapping, multi-level and humorous dialogue that builds into a cacophonous soundscape that exposes yet masks the characters.
Set and costume designer Chau’s inventive cross-like stage juts out into the audience for the actors to work creatively.
Seelig, an admirer of playwrights Bertoldt Brecht, Samuel Becket, Gertrude Stein and Jon Fosse, prefers theatre capable of “a rich clear sort of ambiguity.” Talking Masks, with its mythic undertones and overtones, poetic rhythms and soundscapes, echoes this sentiment. Its success depends largely on the audience’s knowledge. On opening night, it was assumed everyone had read the script. Bring an open mind, a clear head, a sense of adventure, if this entices you.
Written and directed by Adam Seelig. Talking Masks is at the Walmer Centre Theatre, 188 Lowther Ave., until Nov. 28. For information, call (416) 915-0201. |
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 02 December 2009 )
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