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created by Leah Cherniak, Martha Ross and the company,  directed by Leah Cherniak

Theatre Columbus, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

May 7-25, 2008

Theatre Columbus’s latest production, Dance of the Red Skirts, is a flimsy collection of loosely related skits that derives all of its power from the performances of three likeable, very talented performers.  The title of the play and inspiration for the skits is a 1924 painting by the Swiss-born painter Paul Klee (1879-1940) in browns and greys depicting buildings swaying away from a black hole near the centre.  There are four full human figures in red skirts, only the bottom half of two more and perhaps four more bodiless spotches of red. 

What does it mean?  Klee’s paintings--childlike, whimsical, symbolic--are dream images to prompt reflection in others.  According to Klee, “Art does not reproduce what we see; rather, it makes us see.”  Thus, at the start of the play we meet three characters Celia (Maev Beaty), Roger (Greg Gale) and Rachael (Erin Shields), who in looking at Klee’s painting each see something different--a game, a threat, an erasure of personality.  After a series of accidental and intentional encounters with each other, the three look at the painting again and their views have altered.  Meanwhile, as in Sondheim’s Seurat-inspired Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Victoria Wallace’s clever set that mirrors the painting’s background gradually gains in likeness as the action leaves red skirts and red-skirted figures in analogous positions.        

Our response, though, is “So what?”  The initial contrast of the threesome’s views already shows that different people will find different meanings in the same work of art.  The characters’ views change not because of the painting but because of their own interactions.  As with any collection of skits some are more interesting than others.  Those involving Celia, who loses her schoolmarmish primness through a dalliance with the nebbishy Roger are well-observed and very funny.  Those involving Rachael’s painful attempts to become an artist are less so, especially since her focus on ekphrasis (i.e., art about art) is a rather too self-congratulatory correlative to how the creators seem to view their own play.  Yet, despite its dubious claim to deeper meaning, the play, developed through improvisation, still exudes the freshness of that method because Beaty, Gale and Shields still seem caught up in a sense of discovery and wonder.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-05-11.

Photo: Maev Beaty and Greg Gale.