✭✭✩✩✩

by Jacob Richmond, directed by Michael Kessler

Jack in the Black, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto

November 19-December 5, 2004

Small Returns is a major disappointment.  In 2001 Jacob Richmond’s first play, The Qualities of Zero, directed by Michael Kessler was a theatrical treat from an exciting new voice.  Hopes were high for Richmond’s second full-length play under the same director and featuring a first-rate cast.  The cast cannot be faulted.  They make the very most of material that promises much but delivers little.

The action concerns a day in the life of novice debt collector Point Five (well played by Jordan Pettle), who is hallucinating due to a severe head wound.  His pals at Credit Corps are Nate, an ex-American Marxist (a very funny Randy Hughson), and Roddy, a faux-Irish capitalist (an energetic Tom Barnett).  Roddy gets a lead on a collecting a fortune in percentages from one of Credit Corps’s long-time debtors, Frida, a German writer (played with poise and shrewdness by Rosemary Dunsmore).  Meanwhile, Point Five starts to fall for Abbey, a grieving former high school friend (a cherishably vulnerable Deborah Hay) as he seeks to recapture the romance of World War II by communing with his grandfather’s ghost (a stoic John Clelland).

The play comes across as a rough draft not a finished work and Kessler’s start-stop pacing and awkward blocking only highlight its deficiencies.  None of the intriguing themes--trust versus cynicism, capitalism versus Marxism, reality versus illusion--are developed and neither are the characters.  The tones of fairy tale, satire and nostalgia don’t blend.  The ultimate point is obscure.  The returns indeed are small.        

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2004-11-25.

Photo: John Clelland and Jordan Pettle. ©2004 Rodrigo Moreno.