Reviews 2004
Reviews 2004
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by Julian Doucet, directed by Daryl Cloran
Collective Architecture and Steven Moore, Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto
January 6-18, 2004
It’s hard to know what the point is of Julian Doucet’s Phae (pronounced “fay”). If it’s to show the myth of Phaedra set among poor folk speaking in dialect, Eugene O’Neill did that in 1924 in Desire Under the Elms. If it’s to satirize the myth through the trailer park setting, then why has Doucet written the role of Phae straight and sought our sympathy for her?
It is a paradox. To appreciate how clever Doucet’s transposition of setting is, you need to know one of his sources well—Euripides, Seneca or Racine. The roving hero Theseus becomes a long-haul trucker. Phaedra’s nurse becomes Phae’s hairdresser. However, the better you know Doucet’s sources, the more you realize how superficial his version is. He’s changed the setting but has nothing new to say about what the myth means.
Under director Daryl Cloran the cast has not found a uniform acting style to deal with this mix of kitsch and classic. Caroline Azar (Phae’s hairdresser), Doucet himself (Hippolytus, the doltish stepson Phae lusts after) and Tova Smith (one half of the tabloid-reading chorus) exaggerate and mug as if in a sketch comedy, while Oliver Becker (Phae’s husband, Big Daddy T), Phae (Leanna Brodie) and Kimwun Perehinec (the other half of the chorus) act in a realistic mode. By playing up the clichéd trailer park satire, Cloran needlessly undermines the show’s most powerful component—Brodie’s remarkably moving, heartfelt performance as a woman yearning something real amid the tawdriness around her.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2004-01.
Photo: Julian Doucet. ©2004 David Laurence.
2004-01-15
Phae: A Trailer Park Trashedy