Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✩✩✩
written by Stephen Massicotte, directed by Bob White
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
September 22-October 24, 2010
To celebrate its 40th season the Tarragon Theatre might have revived one of the numerous great Canadian plays its has launched over the years. Instead, it opened with Stephen Massicotte’s latest work The Clockmaker. It’s depressing to think this won the 2009 award for Outstanding New Play in Calgary, since it makes for an extraordinarily boring 95 minutes. The action makes no sense while it occurs and even less sense once the play is over.
In tone it starts like Franz Kafka but ends like Frank Capra. Humble clockmaker Heinrich Mann (Christian Goutsis) is summoned for a session of menacing questioning by Monsieur Pierre (Damien Atkins) about a crime that Mann may be about to commit. Back at his shop Mann is sorry to tell Frieda (Claire Calnan) that he cannot repair the cuckoo clock her husband Adolphus (Kevin Bundy) destroyed. In one scene the easily jealous Adolphus beats Frieda. In another he abjectly begs forgiveness. Interleaved with scenes in Monsieur Pierre’s chamber and in Mann’s shop are scenes where Mann runs into Frieda, who sometimes does, sometimes does not recognize him or know who she is. The play is so ineptly written that we assume Frieda is as mentally ill as her husband rather than realizing this is supposed to be a mystery. In fact, we do not realize there is a mystery to be solved until the conclusion when Massicotte stamps all the pieces of the puzzle--that we didn’t know or care was a puzzle--into place. Unfortunately, his sentimental ending not only reveals the Kafkaesque menace as a cheat but makes nonsense of Mann’s scenes with Monsieur Pierre.
The four cast members act in completely different styles. Atkins creates the right mood of nightmarish officiousness. Bundy acts in the mode of gritty naturalism. Calnan is at her best as the ethereally amnesiac Frieda. Goutsis, however, who created the role in Calgary, uses such an unvarying tone of clownish cringing and servility that it rapidly becomes annoying. This is especially dulling since Massicotte indulges in long stretches of repeated phrases without Beckett’s or Pinter’s ability to endow repetition with further meaning. Massicotte also toys with the 18th-century idea of God the Clockmaker without ever delving into its implications. The notion has been revived lately to support the concept of “intelligent design.” Unfortunately, the design of Massicotte’s play is anything but.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-09-23.
Photo: Kevin Bundy, Claire Calnan, Christian Goutsis, Damien Atkins. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2010-09-23
The Clockmaker