Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✩✩
by Mike McPhaden, directed by Rebecca Brown
Theatre Passe Muraille, TPM Mainspace, Toronto
April 11-29, 2007
Mike McPhaden’s Noble Parasites is not the miniature masterpiece that his acclaimed Poochwater was, but it is still a clever light entertainment. Parasites is a double-bill of two short one-act plays--The Bookworm, set centuries from now and Sea Change, set only decades from now. Both present dystopian visions of the future, the first seemingly a result of what happens in the second.
In The Bookworm we meet two cousins, Lindy (Kate Hewlett), preparing for exam that will grant her adulthood, and her teacher Fran (Amy Rutherford). What’s left of parasite-infested humanity lives underground “happy in their hunger” after global warming has destroyed the surface. The reigning powers have indoctrinated society through doggerel axioms that this has always been so, though Lindy has come a cross a book that contradicts the official version. You expect Captain Kirk to beam in at any moment to struggle with the Prime Directive, but, unfortunately, Lindy’s examiner (Julian Richings) arrives and her exam proceeds with a dreadful twist.
In Sea Change palmtops have become literally the tops of everyone’s palms. Here a former video game designer (Richings) waits to meet a contact to sell information that will cause her candidate to win a vital election. Unluckily, he is distracted by a religious pamphleteer (Hewlett) and then, with dire results, mistakes a lovely blonde (Rutherford) for his contact.
Though The Bookworm is better constructed, the acting is more convincing in Sea Change. One wishes McPhaden had made much more of the fascinating theme of parasitism that runs through both playlets, but he consistently chooses easy jokes over the more mordent, existential humour of Poochwater. Though fitfully amusing, Noble Parasites left me not quite “happy in my hunger” for something more substantial.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-04-16.
Photo: Kate Hewlett, Julian Richings and Amy Rutherford. Photo by Cylla Tiedemann.
2007-04-16
Noble Parasites