Reviews 2003
Reviews 2003
✭✭✩✩✩
by Neil Monaghan, Diene Petterle & Christopher Heimann, directed by Christopher Heimann
theimaginarybody, du Maurier Theatre Centre, Toronto
April 15-20, 2003
"Less Than Perfect"
Following its win of a Fringe First Award for "innovation in theatre and outstanding new production in The Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2002" and sold-out runs in Edinburgh and London, theimaginarybody's production of "100" is making its North American debut at this year's du Maurier World Stage Festival. It's hard to see what the fuss is all about. While there is some fine acting and excellent mime, the premise is flimsy and the dialogue lame.
The premise is exactly the same as in the 1998 Japanese movie "After Life" written and directed by Hirokazu Koreeda though executed with considerably less finesse. Five people find themselves in an anteroom to the afterlife. They are given a limited time (a count to 100) to choose one memory the relive through all eternity. (At least the people in "After Life" had a week.) The catch is that all other memories will be wiped out. One of them called the Guide (Lawrence Werber) keeps urging the others up to choose a memory and get on with it, but the other four are predictably befuddled and ask all the predictable questions: "Where are we?", "Who are you?" etc. The situation and dialogue never move beyond those of a lesser episode of "The Twilight Zone".
Sophie (Tanya Munday) is a woman who gives up a personal life for success in business, finally winning a manager of the year award. But success has not brought her happiness. Alex (Matt Boatwright-Simon) is a bicycle courrier who dreams of becoming a professional racer. But he never fulfills he dream. Nia (Claire Porter), his girlfriend is happy just to have found a good man to live with. In contrast with these Londoners is Ketu (Matthieu Leloup), who is the first in his village to realize that the earth is round, but like an aboriginal Galileo is forced to recant his theory. We are given no notion of even what continent Ketu is from let alone what his "tribe" is supposed to be. Leloup, being a Caucasian male with a French accent, led me to think at first that Ketu was supposed to be from some benighted village in France.
The reason why one memory must be chosen is never made clear. The Guide says that all memories fade, so, one wonders, why keeping all of them until they dissipate is really so bad. What is all too evident is that the play's premise must merely have been an excuse for a series of improvisations that were eventually written down as a play. Munday, Porter and Leloup are best at making the banal dialogue sound meaningful. The less moduated performances of Boatwright-Simon and Werber have the opposite effect.
The one great strength of the show is its use of mime and light. Using only a few bamboo sticks on the nearly bare set and making their own sound effects, the actors instantly conjure up a tropical rainforest, a subway, a swing set in a park, an office, a party in a bar. Lighting designer Adam Crosthwaite, using relatively few instruments, achieves marvellous effects, particularly when the shadow of a stick changes with the position of the sun leading Ketu to believe the sun orbits around the earth. Director Christopher Heimann's imagination in staging these episodes and the cast's expertise in carrying them out makes one wish the story itself were more engaging.
Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in TheatreWorld (UK) 2003-04-18.
Photo: Cast of 100. ©2003 theimaginarybody.
2003-04-18
100