Reviews 2002
Reviews 2002
✭✭✭✭✩
by Kathleen Oliver, directed by Richard Rose
Necessary Angel, Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto
October 24-November 10, 2002
"Rhyming Couples"
One might have thought that plays in rhyming couplets had gone out with the 18th century. Anyone who has heard or read Richard Wilbur's translations of Molière knows how delectable the form can be when a modern mind sets to work on it. In 1991 American David Hirson had a major success with "La Bête", an original play in couplets about the nature of acting and theatre, mounted in Toronto by the Canadian Stage in 1993. Now we have one by Vancouverite Kathleen Oliver set among poetry enthusiasts at some unspecified time in the past. While not as consistently witty as "La Bête" or with as broad a theme, "Swollen Tongues" is very amusing, attractively designed and well acted.
"Swollen Tongues" makes its Toronto debut having already achieved success elsewhere. It 1997 National Playwriting Competition, was produced in Vancouver in 1998 and then in London, England, in 2000. The British Off the Cuff Theatre Company took it on tour through the UK in 2002.
The story concerns a brother and sister, Thomas and Catherine, who are being tutored in the art of writing poetry by a certain Dr. Wise. Thomas is a typical male chauvinist and assumes women do not have the wit to write poetry even though his own verse is execrable. Dr. Wise begs to differ and is encouraging Catherine to "find her own voice" in poetry. Her difficulty is that while she has no trouble improving her brother's doggerel, she cannot write her own poetry alone. The play's title refers to tongues being bitten so long holding back what they want to say.
What all the characters want to say is to speak their love. Dr. Wise has an interest in Catherine beyond a master-student relationship and both Catherine and Thomas are in love with the pert dressmaker Sonja. For her part Sonja is infatuated by the poetry of Sir Overripe, a man she has never seen. When Thomas discovers that Sir Overripe's poetry seems to be cribbed from his own, he challenges Overripe to a poetry duel of "bouts rimés" to determine who shall deserve the hand of Sonja. That Dr. Wise is not what he seems, that Catherine herself is "Overripe" and that Sonja herself takes Overripe's place in the duel are just the beginnings of a series of multiple cross-dressings that eventually lead to a happy end.
Oliver, also a poet, writes excellent rhyming couplets, perfectly suited to the artifice of this story about people more obsessed with the means of expressing love than the end. She doesn't make the rhyming word as much a surprise as Richard Wilbur does in his Molière translations or as Hirson did in "La Bête", but she does so often enough to make one realize all over again how enjoyable this form is. A greater source of humour is Oliver's sudden changes of diction. Standard Restoration poeticisms "ere", "naught", "blight" rub elbows with phases like "Get real", "too out there" and "doh". Calling attention to the very artifice of the language is always funny because Oliver never overdoes it.
Her plot, too, is an artifice, but here she encounters some difficulties. The play pretty much seems to end by the end of Act 1, and without the final speech by Dr. Wise we wouldn't necessarily know there was more to follow. The plot in Act 2 is not as tightly knit as in Act 1 and requires inconsistencies in the character of Sonja. Throughout Act 1 she is raring to bed Catherine once she learns of her love. But once they are alone in a house called "Women Only Land" in Act 2, she becomes "shy". She determines the house is empty but then is not surprised to find a woman named Amanda there. She is not "shy" with Amanda and immediately proposes another poetry duel to decide her fate. Even in such an artificial plot one feels Oliver has had to force things too much to arrange this obvious parallel to duel in Act 1. A note states that Toronto is seeing the "final version" of the play, but I feel it still needs revision and could stand to be expanded. We really know only Catherine and Dr. Wise, Sonja's character, no matter how omnisexual, does hang together and a Thomas has no personality other than being a stereotyped male chauvinist.
Director Richard Rose, in this his last season with Necessary Angel, has assembled a cast from diverse quarters. The chief delight of the evening is Karen Hines (better known as the clown Pochsy) as Catherine. Her every intonation, hesitation and gesture are so comically right you would think it had been written for her. Her overheard bedroom soliloquy and the dress-fitting scene in Act 1 are the highlights of the show. Shaw Festival regular Ben Carlson is very successful in making more of Thomas than is in the text. Insecurity lies not too deep beneath his bluster. His turn as "Amanda", when he brings out all the awkwardness of a male forced to don female attire, is hilarious. Soulpepper regular Nancy Palk is mainly responsible for bringing a more measured tone to the evening both as "Dr. Wise" and in her true identity as Alex, a worshipper at Sappho's shrine. Second City regular Melody A. Johnson has the misfortune to play the seamstress Sonja, a character conceived mostly for the convenience of the plot than internal coherence. Her tone of voice has a permanent smirk in it. This works well when Sonja is aggressive, especially when disguised as the pushy Overripe, but when she is not this tone undermines what little credibility there is.
Rose does not have much sense of Restoration style. He generally encourages the actors to play their parts too broadly when greater subtlety would in fact make the play more humorous. The addition of amplified noises of quill on parchment is a misplaced attempt to make the already funny play funnier. The interludes between scenes of Palk reading Sappho's poems is relevant to the play's celebration of lesbianism but certainly deadens the tone in an otherwise lighthearted romp.
David Boechler has cleverly designed an effective seven-door set for the tiny Factory Studio stage. His costumes are highly attractive modern takes on 18th-century designs. Melinda Sutton's lighting gives the piece a candlelit glow.
Kathleen Oliver is a talent to watch. If not everything works in "Swollen Tongues", quite enough does to make it one of the most enjoyable new Canadian plays I've seen this year.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Melody A. Johnson, Ben Carlson, Karen Hines and Nancy Palk. ©2002 Necessary Angel.
2002-10-30
Swollen Tongues