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by Penelope Skinner, directed by David Tompa

Red One Theatre Collective, Lower Ossington Theatre, Toronto

November 8-24, 2012

Tim: “I knew you wouldn’t leave me. And then I woke up.”

Eigengrau, by British playwright Penelope Skinner is now receiving its North American premiere thanks to the Red One Collective.  For the first half of its 100 minutes, the play seems to be merely a wickedly funny, smartly written contemporary romcom about four twentysomethings not dealing well with their quarter-life crisis.  Publicity for the show, including the company’s own poster and programme cover, would lead you to believe that’s all the show is about – but don’t be deceived.  Skinner has much more in mind than that as the obscure title should suggest.  Her play uses the new cliché of the quarter-life crisis play as a metaphor for a tragicomic satire of human nature in general and its reliance on self-deception to cope with reality.

As Wiktionary informs us, “Eigengrau” (meaning “[one’s] own grey” in German), is “The dark grey colour seen by the eyes in perfect darkness, as a result of signals from the optic nerves.”  What this means is that in the absence of external stimulation your eyes perceive the inherent background noise in the visual system and interpret that noise as grey.  It is a flaw in Skinner’s play that she neither uses this technical word, except in the title, much less explains it, but as least the title points to the more generalized notion she explores.  As we see with all four of her characters, if there is a gaping void in their beliefs, morals or philosophy, they don’t perceive it because of the unconsciously self-generated mental screens that shield them from it. 

Cassie (Claire Armstrong) is a radical feminist who lobbies parliament on women’s issues, particularly for legislation to ban rape videos and other websites devoted to violence against women from the internet and to prosecute those who host them.  Cassie has found her roommate Rose (Helen Johns) via Gumtree, the UK’s version of Craigslist, and Helen proves to be a major problem.  Helen is blithely unworried that she hasn’t paid any rent, trusting, as she does with everything, that things will somehow work out in the end.  Unpaid bills have pursued Rose to her new address, but Rose thinks that if she doesn’t open them they don’t exist. 

Cassie wakes up one morning to find that Rose has brought home a man the previous night.  This is Mark (Jeff Irving), a high-paid marketing advisor.  The seducer and the feminist finds themselves immediately at odds, though Mark feels strong attraction to Cassie despite (or because of) their differences.  Every day, except when he finds a good lay for the night, Mark returns to his posh apartment when an old classmate of his is staying, nominally until he finds better employment than the dead-end job he has at a fast-food restaurant.  Mark took Tim (Kristian Bruun) in because Tim couldn’t deal with life after the death of his grandmother whose ashes he keeps in cat-shaped jar on the coffee table and speaks to on occasion.  Tim still can barely cope and makes hopeless inquiries about jobs for care-givers, since that is what he thinks he is.

In romcom style, we find that Mark, at pains to prove he is not stereotypical predatory male, has attended one of Cassie’s speeches and claims that she has converted him to feminism.  Cassie is torn between her desire to believe that Mark may be the exception to the rule and her innate distrust of all men. 

      

Up to this point, with witty barbs flying, the play could easily be mistaken for light entertainment.  Skinner has structured the play intentionally to seduce us into a superficial view of the action.  What she has in store is far beyond anything this light-hearted introduction would lead you to imagine.  The turning point comes when Tim takes Rose’s order for a veggie burger at work.  We may have thought that Rose was simply a ditzy airhead.  Her conversation reveals something more disturbing that funny. 

Not only does Rose believe in astrology and chakras and a whole jumble of New Age ideas, but she also believes in fairies, dwarves, giants and pretty much every supernatural being Harry Potter ever encountered.  Most worryingly she believes in fate and that colours and sounds in the world around her give her signs dictating what she should do.  Thus, we see that we can’t merely write Rose off as silly.  Instead, she is delusional and may have a serious personality disorder.  While Mark saw his liaison with Rose as simply a one-night stand, she, unfortunately, thinks she has found true love and enlists Tim, smitten with Rose’s eccentricity, to help her win him back.  Her attempt and its aftermath climax in a scene that is as bizarre as it is gruesome. 

While Rose and Tim may seem the most obviously pathetic characters in the play, Skinner shows that self-delusion is only a matter of degree.  Mark and Cassie, who appear to be the strongest, most capable characters in the play, also suffer from self-delusion.  The questions the play poses is, first “Who is better off at the end – characters like Rose and Tim or characters like Cassie and Mark?” and second, “What does this imply about people in general and the world they live in?”

Director David Tompa has assembled a top notch cast who all give sterling performances.  Especially remarkable is that Tompa allows each character to win our sympathy no matter how loony or unlikeable they may first appear.  Claire Armstrong’s performance is particularly rich.  Her Cassie is not the strident feminist we first think, but a young woman grappling with outrages in the outside world as a way of quelling her own inner demons.  Her confession to Mark of her contradictory nature has the strongest emotional pull of the play. 

Jeff Irving could easily have played Mark simply as a cad and a villain.  With amazing subtlety he keeps us completely in doubt about the nature of his attraction to Cassie.  On the one hand, he seems compelled to pursue her by force of habit and because such a difficult catch is more thrilling.  On the other hand, Irving suggests that Mark may actually be falling for her despite his routine of seduction. 

Helen Johns accomplishes the impossible by making us completely believe in the least believable character in the play.  Though Rose is said to be 27, Johns gives her such a childlike air of innocence that we suspect before her confession to Tim, that she is not stupid but mentally unstable and thus deserves our pity rather our disdain.  Johns also invests Rose with such fragility that it seems it is only her belief that she is right that is holding her together.

Kristian Bruun could easily have played Tim Muffin as the clown of the play and butt of its frequent fat jokes.  Yet, he, too, communicates such real pain at the loss of his grandmother that we can’t ridicule the deep depression and sense of purposelessness that has overtaken him.

The venue for Eigengrau is the first floor cabaret of the Lower Ossington Theatre.  Sitting at tables able to drink beer and whisky during the show reinforces the false impression that the show is only light entertainment.  The venue is used as a cabaret only once, in the climactic scene involving Rose in a karaoke bar.  It only makes that horrific scene more powerful, but some may wonder if one scene is enough to justify using the venue for the entire play.

Jason Pooley’s set design is quite inventive in using different tarps attached two of the four poles on stage to create the various locales.  But there are twenty scenes in the play and while Pooley’s solution is interesting, there’s no doubt that the problem of frequent scene changes could have been solved in a simpler way, say via blinds or drapes, rather than the manpower-intensive method Pooley has devised. 

Earlier this summer the Red One Theatre Collective brought us the Shaw rarity Passion, Poison and Petrifaction.  Now they bring us the North American premiere of a fascinating British play.  Bigger, better-known theatre companies get all the attention, but we have to be thankful that we have companies like Red One to present the unorthodox, form-breaking works that the others too easily ignore.

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Helen Johns and Claire Armstrong. ©2012 David Spowart.

For tickets, visit http://redonetheatre.com.