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by Michael Healey, directed by Daryl Cloran

Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

October 29, 2006

Generous is the second new play by Michael Healey to hit Toronto this year that does not realize its potential.  The odd structure, which seems to have nothing to do with the theme, presents the first acts of four two-act plays followed by three of their second acts.

The uncompleted first Act 1 is a gender-reversed, Air Farce-like view of Ottawa politics and a misleading introduction to the remaining three plays that focus on three linked relationships: a female Albertan oil tycoon (Yanna McIntosh) who seduces a timid journalist (Tom Barnett), an Ottawa judge (Fiona Reid) who has a one-night stand with her talkative clerk (Jordan Pettle), and the judge’s estranged daughter (Michelle Monteith) in an abusive relationship with a Scottish lout (Ari Cohen).  By contrasting the tycoon with the clerk, Healey wants show us that both selfless and selfish motivations can lead to the desire to do good, to be “generous,” but he never examines whether the motivation ultimately alters the effect.

The entire cast does a fine job but can’t save a play where only the relationship between the judge and her clerk is written with a ring of truth.  There is a good play here about these two and the judge’s daughter, but it lies buried among pointlessly shuffled scenes and all-too-easy Ottawa-bashing.                             

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-10-05.

Photo: Fiona Reid and Ari Cohen. ©2006