✭✭✭✩✩

by Abi Morgan, directed by Ashlie Corcoran

Theatre Smash, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

September 27-October 8, 2006

A new company Theatre Smash is presenting the North American premiere of Welsh playwright Abi Morgan’s wonderfully intriguing Tiny Dynamite (2001).  Here Morgan takes a realistic situation and gently pushes it to the border of fantasy and allegory.   

The story concerns two friends who are polar opposites.  Lucien (Steven McCarthy) is quiet and obsessed with order.  The garrulous Anthony (Dylan Trowbridge), seemingly rendered schizophrenic after being struck by lightning, leads a grubby life on the streets.  Every summer Lucien finds Anthony and takes him on a summer holiday not just for pleasure but as a kind of atonement.  Once a woman they both loved died.  This summer they meet Madeleine (Perrie Olthuis).  Both are attracted to her and the fear grows whether the past will repeat itself. 

Trowbridge gives a superb performance, indeed one of the best male performances of the year, capturing the volatile mix of anger, wildness and longing for peace that makes up the disturbed Anthony.  McCarthy and Olthuis can’t match him in intensity and nuance but still do fine work.  What undermines the magical atmosphere most is the needlessly fussy set by Robin Fisher and the unsteady pacing by director Ashlie Corcoran.  Loud zaps on the sound system accompanying every allusion to electricity between people soon become tiresome.  The play hums with its own mystery.              

©Christopher Hoile

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

Photo: Dylan Trowbridge, Perrie Olthuis and Steven McCarthy. ©Lucas Gramajo.