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by Morwyn Brebner, directed by Eda Holmes

Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

April 17-May 27, 2007

Morwyn Brebner has written several successful plays.  The Pessimist, however, is not one of them.  In fact, it seems more like miscellaneous collection of sketches for a play than finished work, much less one deserving a world premiere at the Tarragon.  There is no compelling story and an attempt at an emotional tug at the end fails because it is so unearned.  If the characters have any complexity, Brebner does not explore it.  Only the theme of life as a type of zombiism holds the play together and even that is not new.  Zombies have been metaphors for unthinking activity at least since George Romero.

Brebner places us in a farmhouse somewhere in Ontario where a dying theatre director Marcus (Jim Warren) has, for no coherent reason, decided to stage a play at a nearby garbage dump.  His wife Suzanne (Kristina Nicoll) is happily having an affair with the live-in playwright (Michael Healey), until Marcus brings home a buxom local teenager (Ieva Lucs) to be the star.  Meanwhile, an inexperienced political candidate (Graham Abbey) keeps dropping by and the insomniac Suzanne keeps seeing mysterious things in the dark.  Don’t hope for a good scare or a good laugh.  The entire set-up leads to nothing.  Scenes continually blackout just when they get rolling, a mannerism that first becomes irritating and then sleep-inducing.

At least, John Thompson’s set where rows of wheat define the rooms of the house is clever.  It’s nice to see Abbey after all his heroic roles at Stratford take on the part of a likeable dimwit, and Nicoll does her best to make sense of her inchoate character.  The pity is that Brebner’s play with cutouts for characters, lacklustre dialogue and dearth of drama gives this abundantly talented cast virtually nothing to work with.  By the end you’ll know what it’s like to be one of the living dead.    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-04-26.

Photo: Jim Warren and Kristina Nicoll.