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by Tara Beagan, directed by Ruth Madoc-Jones

Native Earth Performing Arts, Factory Theatre Backspace, Toronto

December 1-18, 2005

Tara Beagan has followed her Dora-winning play “Thy Neighbour’s Wife” with a very poor one.  “Dreary and Izzy” shifts from minute-by-minute realism at its most tedious to a melodramatic plot that fine performances and direction cannot rescue.

After their parents are killed in an accident, Deirdre (Lesley Faulkner) alone must now care for her adoptive Native sister Isabelle (Michaela Washburn), whose life has been blighted by fetal alcohol syndrome.  Physically an adult she has remained mentally at age 8.  Beagan chronicles ad nauseam the minutiae of the sister’s lives until the entrance of Freddie Seven Trees (Ryan Cunningham), a travelling vacuum cleaner salesman.  In a break from realism, Dreary (as Izzy calls Deirdre) and Freddie fall in love at first sight and Freddie instantly takes to Izzy.  To give the action shape, Beagan falls back on the antique device of a palm reader (Sharon Bakker) to predict the women’s’ future.  After two hours of meandering, Beagan crams all the major plot development into the last fifteen minutes.

Having characters rant about the dangers of alcoholism, white adoption of Native children and Catholic schools is not the same as exploring these topics dramatically.  Both Faulkner and Washburn truly give their all, but it’s not enough to make such inert material interesting much less moving.              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-12-08.

Photo: Lesley Faulkner and Michaela Washburn. ©2005 Tara Beagan.