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by Kaitlin Phillips, directed by Ben Esler

Peanutfish Productions, Toronto Fringe Festival, Factory Studio Theatre, Toronto

July 2-11, 2009

Dante is fascinating play by American Kaitlin Phillips in a tautly directed production by Peanutfish Productions of Portland, Oregon.  While it owes a debt to Pirandello’s Six Characters (1921), Phillips' three characters are all real people immortalized in medieval literature and still alive in the present.  Today’s banality versus medieval glory, male versus female power, the “life” of characters versus people are some of Phillips’s intertwining themes.  The whole show is anchored by the intense, highly nuanced performance of Kristan Brown as Petrarch’s beloved Laura, currently living with Petrarch’s fellow poet Dante (Forrest Seamons), who now can neither write nor die.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2009-07-03.

Photo: Caitlin Goldie, Kristan Brown and Forrest Seamons. ©Saskatoon Fringe 2009.