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by Matthew Edison, directed by Michael Kessler

Tarragon Theatre and Jack in the Black Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

March 25-April 27, 2003

The Domino Heart by Matthew Edison is a powerful and moving work that, far from shirking the big questions of life, faces them head on.  Much like Brian Friel's Molly Sweeney (1994), Edison's play is written as a sequence of monologues for one female and two male actors simultaneously present on stage but in separate acting spaces.  As in Friel the play's structure reinforces the theme of isolation.  Edison's symbolism may sometimes be too obvious, but cumulative effect of this mediation on how to live is richly complex.                 

We first meet Kara Fortree (Rosemary Dunsmore in a luminous, deeply felt performance) on the day of her husband Peter's funeral.  Peter died in a car accident as he and Kara argued.  Kara now lives in an anguish of loss and guilt that is a kind of death.  Next we meet the 70-year-old Reverend Mortimer Wright (David Fox), the evening before he is to receive Peter's heart as a transplant.  Fox gives us a genial portrait of this born preacher and lover of aphorism whose positive outlook is clouded by one failure to recognize love long ago.  Last is Leo Juarez (a sharp, forceful Raoul Bhaneja), a cynical advertizing executive and the ultimate recipient of Peter's heart.  A more schematically written character, Leo loathes the world for its very baseness as much as he hates himself for his failure to know love.

Kara brings the play full circle, lingering sorrow now mixed with the joy of living. True love, like Peter's heart, lives in spite of death.  This is an exciting debut of a playwright unafraid to make us think as well as feel.    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2003-03-27.

Photo: David Fox. ©2003 Nir Baraket.