✭✭✭✭✩
<b>by Edward Bond, directed by Lary Zappia
April Productions, Captain John’s Harbour Boat, Toronto
May 8-20, 2007
</b>
It is July 13, 2077. The Authority that rules Britain has abolished the past and the family and all representations of them. People “own” only what the government issues to them. Everyone is under constant surveillance. There are frequent outbreaks of mass-suicide. This is the world of Edward Bond’s <i>Have I None</i> (2000) now receiving its Canadian premiere. Unlike so many plays and musicals set in the future, the mood here is frighteningly real. April Productions captures the atmosphere of fear and anxiety so well, you are glad the play runs only 70 minutes.
It helps immeasurably that director Lary Zappia has found the perfect place to stage the play. After the audience gathers in the comfortable Captain’s Quarters of Captain John’s Harbour Boat, the stage manager meets us to guide us belowdecks to a bare, echoing, all-metal room in the stern of the boat where bare light bulbs shine on peculiar splotches and seem to conjure up the word “torture chamber.” We take our seats around three of the walls, but the three actors plays so close to us we feel uncomfortably involved in the action.
That is exactly what should happen. Edward Bond always wants his audience to feel complicit in the action and to take a stance on what they see. Here we find ourselves in the living quarters of the married couple Sara (Dragana Varagic) and Jams (Martin Julien). Jams works for the police “cleaning things up” so that Sara feels spied on by both the government and her husband. In revenge she keeps a diary of every household infraction, paramount of which is his sitting in “her” chair. The violence of their arguments about whose chair is whose is both absurd and chilling. Bond ultimately is asking what we have that makes us human once everything has been taken away. Into this setting steps a stranger Grit (Dusan Dukic), who claims to be Sara’s brother. His claim upsets the order Jams unquestioningly strives to maintain and sets the play on course for tragedy.
All three give impeccable performances. Julien captures the suppressed panic of an obsessive man who world is slipping from his control. Varagic shows us woman who because of constant observation has been turned into the actress of her own life. Dukic gives us the only refreshing glimpse that innocence and sincerity may still exist. Such focussed performances and such perceptive direction only give Bond’s powerful play more impact. We leave the metal chamber desperately hoping that the characters’ future will not be our own.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>Eye Weekly</i> 2007-05-10.
Photo: Dusan Dukic, Martin Julien and Dragana Varagic. Photo by Cylla Tiedemann.
<b>2007-05-10</b>
<b>Have I None</b>