Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✩✩✩
by Wendy Lill, directed by Mary Vingoe
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
January 9-February 11, 2007
Chimera, a dull, unconvincing play by playwright and former NDP MP Wendy Lill, wants to be a play of ideas about stem cell research, an exposé of political power games in Ottawa and a look at the private lives of public figures. It fails at all three. A crisis erupts on Parliament Hill when the new Justice Minister (Philippa Domville) learns from a conservative Christian MP (David Fox) that a scientist (Joan Gregson) has been injecting human stem cells into rhesus monkeys. Since the minister has no quick comeback, a reporter (David Jansen) smells a bigger story. We are told repeatedly that the creation of such “chimeras” (beings sharing genetic material of two or more species) poses major ethical problems and will lead scientists on a path of no return, but Lill never spells out exactly why and never makes us care.
The play deals entirely in stereotypes speaking TV movie dialogue. The cast tries its best to make the characters engaging, though we have seen Jansen’s world-weary act before. Domville and Gregson are excellent and we'd like to know more their characters, but what little Lill gives us is unilluminating. If you are interested in stem cell research, you’ll find a livelier debate in your daily newspaper than in this play.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-01-18.
Photo: Philippa Domville, Geoffrey Pounsett and David Jansen. ©John M. Currid.
2007-01-18
Chimera