Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
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by André Alexis, directed by Richard Rose
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre ExtraExtra Space, Toronto
October 19-30, 2011
“Saying Nothing”
André Alexis’s project of writing a play about each of the Ten Commandments gets off to an inauspicious start with Name in Vain (Decalogue Two). Set among a group of monks sworn to a strict vow of silence, the 70 minutes of the play has only two spoken words--the blasphemy of the title. Alexis admits that he has never written a play without words before and this is all too obvious since it is so boring.
The action consists of five monks of various ages working the four seasons on five rows of a vegetable plot symbolized by five clearly demarcated parallel lines of coloured sand along the length of the stage floor. Four of the monks (Richard McMillan, Eric Goulem, Walter Borden and Sergio Di Zio) work together in harmony but the fifth (Dean Gilmour), apparently simple-minded, can never pay full attention to the task at hand. Either he is too absorbed in feeling and smelling the weeds he is supposed to be picking or he stops all work when he hears the singing of a particular bird. One time he is so entranced he does not watch where he’s walking and knocks over one of plants of Monk 5 (Goulem) thus smudging his line of sand. In response, Monk 5 throws a stone, kills the bird and immediately falls to prayer for his sin. When Monk 4 (Gilmour) later tramples his row to an even greater extent, Monk 5 breaks the second commandment. Immediately after this Monk 1 (McMillan) accidentally hammers his thumb and restrains himself even from crying out though he is clearly in great pain. Since the personality of Monk 1 gradually changes from generous to brittle, Alexis seems to pose the question whether the release of anger through words, even if blasphemous, is not better than repressing an expression of anger and pain.
Alexis states in the programme, “If I wasn’t interested in using theatre to illuminate the ten commandments, I was interested using the ten commandments to examine theatre.” To that end he set Decalogue Two in the wordless environment of mime. Unfortunately, that choice complicates his examination since the blasphemy breaks not only the second commandment, but also the order’s vow of silence and the rule of mime. In the second two cases, any words, not specifically blasphemy would be a violation. If Alexis is really examining theatre, mime on any subject could have been chosen and the emphasis would then have more clearly been on theatre rather than the monastic setting.
Besides this conceptual problem is the practical problem. The set and actions are already minimal, but the play itself is not. Too much of the action is involved in generalized scene-setting or is completely extraneous to the story. What purpose does the bug-spraying scene serve? Why have Monk 5 do penance quite so many times? The presence of Dean Gilmour is a constant reminder that his own Theatre Smith-Gilmour, masters of mime, could dispense with the whole story in about 10-20 minutes by boiling it down to its essentials. As it is Alexis has not written the play, nor Rose directed it, to bring out any more than one personality trait per character. This gives the play the quality of a fable but also means that there is little point in detailing the naturalistic action of gardening to such an extent.
Inevitably some actors are more adept at mime than others. Gilmour, naturally, is the most practiced and expressive and commands our attention whenever he is on stage. Surprisingly, McMillan, too, though best known for speech and song, is excellent at conveying strong feelings silently.
The star of the show is really composer and sound designer John Gzowski, whose soundtrack of natural sounds--birds, bugs, weather and bells--vividly creates the world of the play from which the monks have deliberately banned their own contribution. Ultimately, Alexis spends far too long to accomplish too little. Fine as the ensemble work is, it is not complex enough to hold one’s interest. Can Alexis do for theatre what Krzysztof Kieślowski did for cinema in his masterpiece Dekalog (1898)? Name in Vain does not augur well, but we’ll have to see another instalment or two before we can judge.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Dean Gilmour, Eric Goulem, Sergio Di Zio, Walter Borden, Richard McMillan.
©2011 Erin Brubacher.
For tickets, visit www.tarragontheatre.com.
2011-10-21
Name in Vain (Decalogue Two)