Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✩✩✩
by Salvatore Antonio, directed by David Oiye
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
March 26, 2006
Actor Salvatore Antonio’s first full-length play, In Gabriel’s Kitchen, is receiving its world premiere in an oddly unattractive production. It feels like two distinct stories whose scenes have been arbitrarily shuffled together. One story is about the experience of first love between two 18-year-olds, Gabriel Montesano (Marc Bendavid) and Matt Finnerty (Kristopher Turner). The other is about an Italian-Canadian family falling apart by not coming to terms with Gabriel’s suicide. The first story is very good; the second is not.
set in the 1950s in a small town, but it is set in Toronto just before 2003. Since Gabriel knows what his family is like, why does he come out to them after so little experience and how can he be so surprised by their response?
Clichés are endemic to both stories but the love story, especially as acted by Bendavid and Turner, has a winning naturalness that captures the exhilaration of first romance. The family’s story requires Gabriel’s mother to metamorphose from an often unintentionally humorous caricature into a fully tragic figure, something Toni Ellwand can’t quite accomplish, while Paul Fauteux is passionate as Gabriel’s brother, the only character whose motivation is clear.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-03-16.
Photos: Marc Bendavid (l) and Kristopher Turner (r).
2006-03-16
In Gabriel’s Kitchen