✭✭✭✭✩ / ✭✭✩✩✩

by Joseph Jomo Pierre, directed by Philip Akin

Theatre Passe Muraille/Obsidian Theatre Company, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto

October 4-19, 2005

A double bill from Joseph Jomo Pierre kicks off Theatre Passe Muraille’s exciting “Stage 3 word.sound.power” series of nine short plays highlighting ethnic and sexual diversity in Toronto.  Pierre succeeds in forging a poetic form of speech from everyday language that makes both plays a pleasure to listen to.  

Born Ready intertwines the narratives of three teenaged black characters.  Blackman (Pierre, also a gifted actor) is a naïve young man excited by his first glimpse of the female body.  The orphaned Peggy Sue (the splendid Cara Ricketts), the play’s moral centre, has drifted into prostitution.  B-Side (an edgy Mike G-yohannes) tries to cultivate a macho façade to convince others and himself that he’s somebody.  The play works best as a devastating portrait of coming of age in an environment where drugs and violence are common.  Unfortunately, how and why precisely the three characters are involved in the ending need to be made much clearer.

Pusha Man is a parody of a morality play where Benjamin (G-yohannes) battles with the godlike Pusha Man of the title (a masterful David Collins) over how to treat his pregnant girlfriend Sarah (Ricketts).  Bizarre imagery and unexplained plot twists in service of a conventional moral make this an odd rather than enlightening experience.        

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-10-13.

Photo: Joseph Jomo Pierre in 2008 revival of Born Ready. ©2008.