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by Adam Pettle, directed by Adam & Jordan Pettle

Factory Theatre, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

May 5-June 5, 2011

“The Shoes Still Shine”

It’s great to see that ten years have not taken the shine off Zadie’s Shoes.  Adam Pettle’s 2001 play was one of Factory Theatre biggest hits and was remounted the next year as part of the Mirvish subscription season.  Now the play, newly revised, receives a second production with the playwright himself and his brother Jordan, who created the lead male role, as co-directors.  Their production shows that Zadie’s Shoes is still one of the great English-Canadian plays of the Noughties.

For those unfamiliar with it, the story focusses on Ben, a compulsive gambler like his father and grandfather (“zadie”) before him.  Ben’s girlfriend Ruth is fed up with the standard treatments for her cancer and wants to try an alternative therapy in Mexico.  Ben explains his compulsion to himself as his only way of dealing with Ruth’s illness, but such this is revealed as self-deception when he gambles away the money to pay for Ruth’s trip.  In desperation he go back to shul where he’s never been since his bar mitzvah and meets a self-proclaimed prophet Eli, who not only gives him advice but a hot tip on an upcoming horse race.

In the 2001 production I was so caught up in this main plot, I tended to ignore the importance of the parallel plot involving Ruth’s sister Beth and her attempt of winning a curling championship.  To preserve her lucky streak she convinces herself she has to abstain from sex, much to her husband Sean’s dismay.  In the play, Beth’s performance at the championship in Saskatoon is intercut with Ben’s cheering on a horse at the race track.  In the present production it is clear that the reaction of Beth and Sean to what happens at the tournament is the key to understanding the main plot. 

In 2001 the show was directed by Jackie Maxwell, now Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival.  In general, it must be admitted that she drew more nuanced performances from the cast than do the Pettle brothers.  They tend to rush the action of the first act so that some key events, like Ben’s stealing of Ruth money, happen too quickly to have sufficient impact. 

The least explicable deficit is Joe Cobden’s performance as Ben.  I’ve previously admired Cobden in numerous performances, but he portrays Ben as so completely consumed by his gambling obsession that it seems he is more worried about being found out than about how his habit may jeopardize Ruth’s life.  Instead of being so self-involved, we should see that he torn between his habit and his real love for Ruth.

In 2001, Kelli Fox played Ruth as a strong woman brought low by disease.  In the present production Patricia Fagan gives a different but equally powerful view of Ruth as a fragile woman whose store of inner strength is starting to run out, a portrayal that adds urgency to the events.

The other performances are all strong.  Harry Nelken shows the wisdom gleaming beneath the comedy in Eli that would cause the distracted Ben actually to pay attention to him.  Shannon Perreault is delightful nutty as Ruth’s flower-child sister Lily while Lisa Ryder conveys numerous sources of tension that make Ruth’s other sister Beth seem so inflexible and uptight.  William MacDonald is very funny as the walking train-wreck that is Ben’s friend Bear, and Geoffrey Pounsett makes much more of the role of Beth’s frustrated husband Sean than Paul Essiembre was able to do in 2001.

In 2001 designer Sue LePage’s divided set was not an elegant solution to the staging the play’s many locations.  This time Jackie Chau has come up with a much better idea--a single platform in back that arcs down on either side.  In back is the silhouette of a tree and with stained glass in the arch above it.  This set, under Andrea Lundy’s creative lighting, captures much more fully the 180 degree turn that most of the characters make in the course of the action.  The tree and the stained glass, present in every scene, help reinforce Pettle’s fascinating exploration in the play of the relation of luck and faith.  In one brilliant sequence Pettle shows us Ben, Ruth, Lily, Beth and Bear on stage all praying in their own way for success for Ruth or for themselves. 

The current production seems to view the action as the tragedy of Ben surrounded by the comedy of all the other characters.  Beth discovers that losing in one realm can win her happiness in another, while the other characters are able to let old habits die for the sake of a second chance at life.  Ben does not.  His inability to break the confines of his habit and the narrow definitions of success that entails ultimately isolates him from those he was closest to.  Few Canadian plays have the chance to prove their worth ten years after they premiere.  Those who had faith in Zadie’s Shoes as a great play the first time round will have their faith rewarded.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Harry Nelken and Joe Cobden. © 2011 Jeremy Mimnagh.