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by written and directed by Morris Panych,

Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

September 24-October 27, 2002

"The Two-Headed Goldfish"

Although Morris Panych's latest comedy is highly entertaining, it seems to be composed of two different comedies, both familiar, competing for our attention.  It will strike Toronto audiences, especially Tarragon subscribers, as a cross between Kristen Thomson's "I, Claudia" and the 1979 Peter Sellers film "Being There" without being as focussed as either.  Despite fine performances, direction and design, the play seems unwilling to plumb the emotions it tries to evoke.

"Girl in the Goldfish Bowl" marks something of a change for Vancouver-based playwright Morris Panych.  Though permeated with his absurdist view of life, the play aims at exploring real feelings rather than exaggerated neuroses.  Iris is a girl, almost eleven, who recounts the last days of her childhood in 1962.  She is precocious, imaginative and loquacious, but those around her regard her as an annoyance.  Her father Owen does not work and spends his time drawing geometric forms and dreaming of going to Paris.  Her mother Sylvia has finally decided to leave Owen but on her way out has tripped over her suitcase and broken her wrist.  To make ends meet the family takes in lodgers.  Miss Rose, who works in the fish canning plant, has lived with them so long she is Iris's godmother.

Iris believes that the world has been held together by she pet goldfish Amahl, because when he died, her mother decided to leave and the Cuban missile crisis began.  Almost immediately the unusual Mr. Lawrence appears who seems unfamiliar both with language, customs and the everyday things around him.  The family takes him in and Iris pins her messianic hopes on him as she had on her goldfish.

It was difficult to sit in the Tarragon Theatre and not to think of Kristen Thomson's "I, Claudia", also about a precocious girl facing the breakup of her parents and who also has a goldfish.  The coincidental similarities all work to Panych's disadvantage.  Panych's text is liberally sprinkled with word play and hilarious one-liners, but the humorous surface rarely communicates the hurt underneath as it always did in Thomson.  Panych has Iris switch suddenly to an adult to speak of  pain of the events, as if only an adult's hindsight could see it.  Thomson's play was so moving because she showed us the young Claudia trying to cope with the pain she was experiencing.  Thomson's use of masks and a stage upon the stage elegantly raised larger questions about theatre itself that Panych never does.  Panych's setting during the Cuban missile crisis tries to place the standoff between Iris's parents in a larger context, but he makes little on it.

Panych's plays usually focus on an outsider in society.  "Goldfish" presents two--Iris and Mr. Lawrence.  Though their stories are linked, the two compete for our attention.  Plays like Gombrowicz's "Ivona, Princess of Burgundia" (1938) and Vian's "The Empire Builders" (1959) used a silent character on whom a society projects its fear and hatred.  That does happen in Panych especially in how Miss Rose and Owen regard the inarticulate Mr. Lawrence, but rather more like the film "Being There", the mentally restricted outsider rises from nothing to become seen as the family's saviour, first with Iris, then with Sylvia and finally with Owen.  This story is very funny on its own but tends to compete rather than gel with the story of Iris.

The adult actor Kristina Nicoll does a marvellous job as Iris, hunching her shoulders, using a little girl voice and mimicking the slightly out-of-control facial and body movements of a young person.  Nicoll's shift to adult voice and posture is quite a shock and is a testament to how fully she has taken us in a child.  As Owen, John Jarvis gives one of his best ever performances finding just the right note of pathos in this hopeless shambles of a man who struggles vainly to make his wife stay while knowing he gives her no reason to do so.  The role of Sylvia is underwritten.  It may be funny the first few times that she avoids discussion by running out to the kitchen "to see if something is burning".  But ultimately we don't hear enough from her to understand how she could have married Owen much less stood living with him for so long.  Brenda Robins responds by playing Sylvia as if there were motivations beyond what the text suggests, but this makes her acting contrast with the broader characterization that Panych the director has asked for.

Tanja Jacobs, looking and acting like a cross between Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz, is hilarious as Miss Rose.  The scene when she struggles to stay alert under the influence of one of Owen's pills is priceless.  Richard Zeppieri plays the enigmatic Mr. Lawrence just as if he were, as Iris suspects, a fish out of water.  His blank expression and monotone voice make his non-comprehension of the everyday even funnier.

Ken MacDonald's two storey sets is far more elaborate than one usually sees at the Tarragon.  The wood throughout the house looks weathered and bleached like the wharves in the presumed vicinity.  Audiences are likely to find the most humour in the costumes for Miss Rose, who has never left the immediate postwar period behind.  John Thompson's lighting lends the stage a soft glow of nostalgia.

Contrary to habit, Panych did not direct the play for its world première in Vancouver.  He does do the duties for Toronto.  He is adept at pacing the action and finding humour in the abrupt shifts that characterize it.  One can tell that Panych means the ending to be wrenching, but too little of the play has delved into more serious emotions for it to have that effect.  "Goldfish" is a pleasant two hours and Iris is a perky character, but I didn't leave the Tarragon with the complex mixture of elation and sadness that I did not long ago after encountering the endearing Claudia.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Tanja Jacobs and Kristina Nicoll. ©2002 Tarragon Theatre.