✭✭✭✭✩

by Adam Pettle, directed by Jackie Maxwell

Factory Theatre, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

January 3-February 11, 2001

“A Sure Bet”

"Zadie's Shoes" by Adam Pettle is one of the finest English-language Canadian plays I've seen for several years.  Although this is Pettle's first full-length play, it shows a greater elegance of structure and means than many many recent, highly praised works by more experienced authors.  Unlike the Governor General-award winning Elizabeth Rex by Timothy Findley, this play does not contain walking symbols spouting clichés as if they were profundities.  Unlike David Young's  "Glenn", this play is not an intricate formal exercise providing no insight into its subject.  Unlike George F. Walker's "Heaven", this play is not a would-be shocking adolescent satire on religion requiring a lecture at the end in case we didn't get the point. 

   

No, "Zadie's Shoes" far outshines these plays because it has a set of true-to-life characters so fascinating I wished the play had been longer just to find out more about them.  Their language is not artificial, pretentious or arch but rather completely natural, each character having his or her own well-defined mode of expression.  The themes that link the characters' lives do not feel stamped onto the work from above, as in all three of my counter-examples, but rather arise of their own accord from the characters' interactions.  As a result, you will find more thematic connections among the characters the more you think about the play, rather than suffering the intellectual Chinese food syndrome that would-be trendy plays induce.  The play succeeds so well, in fact, because it follows no particular trend at all and instead allows the story to shape the play.

   

The story concerns a Jewish waiter, Benjamin, a compulsive gambler like his father and grandfather ("zadie") before him.  His girlfriend Ruth has given up the conventional treatments she has undergone for her cancer and instead has saved enough money for both of them to fly to Mexico, where she will undergo an alternative therapy.  Benjamin has kept the extent of his habit secret from Ruth, especially since he has now lost more money than he can repay.  His troubles have drawn him to enter a synagogue where he meets a elderly man, Eli, who claims to be a prophet but who also likes to bet on horses.  Armed with a tip from Eli, Benjamin bets all the money Ruth has set aside on a horse and enlists the help of a racing acquaintance, Bear, who is trying to dry out from addictions to alcohol, heroin and gambling, among others, to cover up for him. 

Meanwhile, Ruth tries to tell her two sisters, Lily and Beth, about her plan to go to Mexico, but their incessant bickering makes it impossible.  Though never explicitly stated (the play, unlike so many, assumes an intelligent audience) we come to see that both Benjamin and Ruth are betting all they have--he his money, she her life--on a kind of salvation.  The only explicit parallel is between Benjamin and the curler Beth, the action intercutting between his crucial horse-race and her crucial national match.  The play evolves implicitly into an intriguing meditation on the importance of belief--whether religious faith or belief in luck. 

   

It pains me to say so, but of the seven actors, the least effective is Jordan Pettle (Adam's older brother) as Benjamin.  While he looks right and his facial and gestural language is perfect, his weakness, as in previous shows, is his line delivery.  Unlike the other six, he rushes through all his lines with little care for clear diction, variety of rhythm or breath control.  It is a testament to Adam's tight structure, that we become involved in the story despite how Jordan plays the central character. 

   

The rest of the cast is excellent.  As Ruth, Kelli Fox turns in her fourth splendid performance in just eleven months, setting herself new challenges in moving from prudish daughter in "Easy Virtue" to the imperious Step-daughter in Pirandello's "Six Characters" to the amorous lesbian security guard in "Slavs!" to the cancer-ridden Ruth, whose suffering she makes uncomfortably real. Torri Higginson plays her older sister Beth, an already uptight woman who has become so focussed on her upcoming tournament she has lost concern for anyone else, including her husband Sean. Juno Mills-Cockell makes the younger sister Lily into a more interesting figure than the drugged-out New Age flake she first appears to be. 

   

Paul Soles, best known for his 16 years as the host of television's "Take 30", proves to be a fine stage actor.  His role as Eli, in the wrong hands, could have been made a caricature or ruined by shtick, but Soles avoids this to make him a fascinating character--enigmatic, yet warmly human.  In telling the delightful stories Pettle has given him, he becomes a kind of chorus to the action.  Soles also plays the deeply flawed father who haunts Benjamin's dreams.  Benjamin's acquaintance (and Lily's boyfriend), Bear, was created by Randy Hughson, but taken over by James Kidnie when the play's run was extended.  Kidnie makes Bear the most vivid character in the show along with Soles' Eli.  He has the jittery speech and demeanour of someone whose has fried his brain far too many times and now must muster what little will-power he has to avoid a relapse.  Each of his exit lines provoked enthusiastic applause.  The single flaw in the play is that the character Sean, Beth's neglected husband, is underwritten.  Paul Essiembre, in a major shift from more forceful roles, does what he can with Sean, but there is not really enough to work with.

   

Much of the play's vitality and truth-to-life stems from Jackie Maxwell's clear, detailed direction.  Sue LePage's set has a large section of risers occupying the central playing area of the Factory Theatre stage, thus forcing most of the action to take place in smaller areas to the extreme right or left.  There must be a more elegant solution than this.  Her costumes, however, especially for Lily, Bear and Eli, suit the characters perfectly.  The starkness of the set is softened and the story's mood enhanced by Robert Thomson's wide range of lighting effects.  Marc Desormeaux's sound design makes the intercut horse race and curling match particularly vivid. 

   

I left the theatre elated that finally here was a play that deserved praise not for being another goodish Canadian work, but for being an excellent play tout court.  I am eagerly awaiting Adam Pettle's next.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Jordan Pettle and Randy Hughson. ©2001 Factory Theatre.