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by Sharon Pollock, directed by Diana Leblanc

Soulpepper Theatre Company, Young Centre, Toronto

August 26-September 8, 2010

Jane Spidell gives the performance of the year in Doc.  As a woman driven to alcoholism and mental instability by her husband’s neglect, Spidell conveys the mixed emotions of rage, shame and yearning with a raw power one seldom sees on a Canadian stage.  Her descent from a smart professional woman to pathetic ghost of herself is truly harrowing.  Yet, under Diana Leblanc’s lucid direction, the entire cast glows with intensity.

Sharon Pollock’s Doc (1984) is an avowedly autobiographical play.  Pollock splits herself into two characters--Catherine (Carmen Grant) her self at age 35 and Katie (Hannah Gross) her self at age 12--as she examines her fraught relationship with her doctor father Doc (R.H. Thomson).  Catherine visits him intent on getting answers to about the past that have haunted her.  Was her grandmother’s death an accident or suicide?  Why was he constantly away from home?  Why did he allow his best friend, whom they called “Uncle Oscar” (Derek Boyes), to act as a surrogate husband and father?  Pollock shifts back and forth in time to fill in the past.  It’s clear that Doc’s decision not to allow his wife “Bob,” (Spidell) a registered nurse, to work is the direct cause of her depression and decline.  Why he should forbid this is never clear.  They two met while both were working.  Doc has no objection to other women working, so why forbid her from practicing at all?  What may have been true in real life must be made plausible on stage, but Pollock never clarifies this key point.  We can see why a daughter might wish to reach out one last time to the father who completely neglected her, but after we learn the extent of his neglect, the symbolic reconciliation at the end seems forced and unsatisfying.

The play is best viewed as a showcase for actors.  Besides Spidell, Thomson gives a painfully believable portrait of a workaholic, more attentive to the needs of the community than of his own family.  Pollock doesn’t quit see that Doc’s undue obsession with work is a mental dysfunction itself.  Grant is justifiable cool as Catherine and primed for Doc’s evasions.  Gross is superb in showing Katie’s growth from innocence to disgust.  Boyes gives one of his best-ever performances as  a man filled with pity for Doc’s family but furious with the emasculation Doc’s trust implies.  Unlike other drug-and-drink fuelled family confrontations like A Long Day’s Journey into Night, Death of a Salesman or August: Osage County, Doc obstinately refuses to resonate with larger meaning.  It seems too isolated an example of an unhappy family.  Nevertheless, it’s a wonder to see this powerhouse cast bring it, wounds and all, to life.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-08-27.

Photo: R.H. Thomson and Jane Spidell.  ©Cylla von Tiedemann.