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by Lukas Bärfuss, translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte, directed by Jason Byrne

The Company Theatre/Canadian Stage, Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, Toronto

November 3-26, 2011

“Does Father Know Best?”

What would you do if a paternity test showed that you were not the father of your son?  That is the question Swiss playwright Lukas Bärfuss uses to begin his comic but ultimately deeply disturbing dissection of the meaning of paternity and the modern family.  Under Jason Byrne meticulous direction his 2007 play The Test (Die Probe) is acted with unfailing commitment by the Company Theatre and Canadian Stage in this its English language premiere.

The play begins with the rant of Peter Korach (Gordon Rand) to his father Simon (Eric Peterson) about the paternity test he has taken and the barely controllable hatred for his wife Agnes (Liisa Repo-Martell) and their son the revelation has unleashed.  He fantasizes about torturing and murdering the two, but rather than expressing any worry, Simon merely calls him an idiot.  Simon’s main concern is that he doesn’t want any scandal coming from his son to taint his current run for mayor against the incumbent who has won over Simon in five previous elections.  While his wife Helle (Sonia Smits) is at her ashram in India, Simon’s de facto personal assistant, valet and campaign manager is Franzeck (Philip Riccio), a former alcoholic whom Simon picked off a park bench and trained to his present position in view of Peter’s complete lack of interest in politics in general or in his father in particular. 

Very early on the play’s dominant themes take shape.  Peter violently rejects the wife and son he had loved simply because a test proves he is not his son’s father.  Simon rejects his son because Peter has no interest in carrying on his legacy.  Simultaneously, Simon treats Franzeck, a complete stranger, as his son because Franzeck vows to carry on Simon’s legacy.  What makes a family?  What constitutes a legacy?  Peter has the misfortune that his only two confidants are unsympathetic.  Simon would like to cut Peter out of his life and the ambitious Franzeck, who encouraged Peter to take the test in the first place, would be to have Peter out of the way.  Thus neither counsels forgiveness as an option.  If Peter loves a child yesterday, must his love change because the child is not his?  Or, is Bärfuss suggesting that the men in the play confuse love with possession?  If a woman or a child is not wholly theirs they cannot love them.

In contrast, men might think of a legacy as something passed from father to son, but that is clearly not necessarily the case.  If Franzeck acts more like a son than Peter, what should keep him from being treated more like a son?  The many plot twists that follow only serve to lend even more irony to absolute definitions of “paternity”, “family” or “legacy”.       

The play provides marvellously complex roles for all five cast members.  Central is Simon himself.  Peterson expertly mines both the comedy and viciousness inherent in this character.  He waxes lyrical about his legacy even though his legacy at the start of the play only one of repeated failure both in politics and at home.  He showers praise on Franzeck as if he were the ideal son, but yet hints that just as he made Franzeck what he is ha can also discard him.  Peterson clearly enjoys walking the unusual knife-edge Bärfuss has created between buffoonery and menace. 

Philip Riccio in a superbly controlled performance conveys all the contradictions seething inside Franzeck.  On the one hand, Franzeck is so grateful to Simon for changing his life that he abases himself as a servant anticipating Simon’s every wish.  On the other, he seeks to make his position permanent by undermining Simon’s relationships with the rest of his family.  He thus is both withdrawn and audacious at the same time.  A surpassing scene with Agnes, a direct parallel with one in Richard III, reveals how duplicitous he is.  Yet, amid all this Riccio suggests an underlying sense of doom as if Franzeck, despite his conniving, never truly believes he will succeed.

As Agnes, Liisa Repo-Martell succeeds in following Peter’s condemnation of her with a performance of such passion that she completely overturns the negative impression Peter gave us.  As Helle, Sonia Smits manages to combine flakiness and wisdom in one character.  Amid talk of tongue-cleaning and karma, she also utters uncomfortable truths about her family that help explain why she has abandoned them.

In previous plays that Jason Byrne has directed for the Company Theatre, he has brought out a high degree of emotional tension.  Here he takes a different tack in line with Bärfuss’s unusual dramatic style.  Unlike Festen or A Whistle in the Dark, where unspoken anger festers until it violently breaks out, Bärfuss has his characters speak out their violent thoughts and dark accusations as if completely detached from them.  This has the eerie effect of suggesting that the characters are so inured to their negative thoughts that they no longer arose any emotion.  The prime exception is Agnes, whose emotional reaction to Peter’s coldness brings out the humanity in her that ought to lead to forgiveness.

The action plays out on John Thompson ultra-modern set, so clean and sleek in its lines that it both reflects the chilliness of the family’s relations and contrasts with the mess the family is in.  Byrne has sound designer Richard Feren use two techniques that some made find off-putting.  Instead of using a blackout to signal the start of each act, he has Feren crank up the volume of the music until audience conversation is impossible then suddenly drop it whereupon the dialogue on the lit stage begins.  Second he has Feren provide background music, as if a radio or stereo were playing somewhere in Simon’s house, all the way through the action.  It was quiet enough that I could hear the dialogue clearly, but I heard older people in the entire section around me complain that they couldn’t hear all the words.  Since this Muzak served no useful purpose except to create a false sense of calm, it would be better to omit it. 

The Test is a fascinating play.  It concludes with the frightening image of the older generation so self-obsessed with creating a “legacy” that it has driven away anyone who could possible carry it on.  Bärfuss, like his European contemporaries Tankred Dorst, Franz Xaver Kroetz, Marius von Mayenburg, Roland Schimmelpfennig and Yasmina Reza, all of whose work has been seen on Toronto stages recently, is adept at finding the absurd in everyday life and fashioning dramatic fables to make us aware of the contradictions in our own behaviour and thought.  It’s stimulating to be exposed to these new developments in drama and I hope Toronto’s theatres continue to explore them.          

                   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Philip Riccio and Eric Peterson. ©2011 Guntar Kravis.

For tickets, visit www.canadianstage.com.