Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✩✩
written and directed by Ed Roy
Young People’s Theatre, Toronto
May 7-17, 2012
“Too Much Method in the Madness”
Ed Roy’s new play Beyond the Cuckoo’s Nest takes on an important subject – mental illness among teenagers – but he hems himself in with so many precautions about depicting his subject that we really learn very little about it at all. Roy is keen that we regard the three teens of his play as “normal” except for the whatever condition they each have. Complicating matters, their mental conditions have already been diagnosed and put under control with medication. Yet, at the same time, he wants us to see how the teens is struggling with the fear of their condition being known. Roy’s difficulty is in showing that teens both are, and are not, the same as everyone else.
The 90-minute play focusses on three characters who belong to a drop-in group for teens diagnosed with a mental health issue. We see them interact both in the group and outside of it. Roy’s strategy is that we get to know the characters first before we find out exactly what the mental issue is that each is dealing with. There is Jude (David Patrick Flemming), who seems obnoxious because he can’t stop talking about himself and can’t seem to take no for an answer. He has skipped his last class at his high school to visit Patricia at her school. He knows she is likes in art and has found the work of a graffiti artist that he thinks she should see. It’s clear that he is very interested in her but that she is not at all interested in him. Meanwhile, Trey (Brendan McMurtry-Howlett) his trying to present an oral book report in front of his class and is having great difficulty doing so. Eventually, we see all three in their group led by an adult therapist, Cathy (Soo Garay).
The principal plot complication is that Patricia says she would like to keep the group and her personal life separate, primarily as a way of preventing Jude from bothering her. Yet, she becomes attracted to Trey and he to her, so that the rule of separation that Cathy approves of is also one Patricia is willing to break, making Jude feel excluded not only in the outside world but within the group itself.
None of this is very gripping. Jude claims to be comfortable with his outsider status and even revels in appearing weird to others. Patricia has changed schools because she was called a “crazy slut” at her own school because of her confused behaviour. Trey does not want his condition known even by his teacher because he doesn’t want special treatment even though knowing would help the teacher to understand that Trey’s botching of his presentations does not have to do with lack of preparation.
Roy reveals Trey’s condition first. He has anxiety disorder where his uncontrollable worry about succeeding impedes his success which then only increases his worry. Patricia’s issues are not made very clear. We learn that she experienced such stress when her boyfriend of nine months broke up with her that she slept with someone on impulse. Being treated as an outcast at school led her to a suicidal depression. What Roy never explores is what underlies Patricia’s depression. Why does a young woman, who otherwise seems with it and self-reliant, need to have a boyfriend to achieve self-validation?
The last to have his diagnosis revealed is Jude. He has paranoid schizophrenia. It would be a great help to the audience if Roy managed to show how this disorder helps explain what seem to be contradictory features in Jude’s personality. When Trey irresponsibly urges Jude to smoke pot, which worsens Jude’s symptoms, Roy gives us quite a frightening picture of what paranoia is like for Jude. It would be a great help if Roy were able to inform us that the symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia paradoxically include both the fear that there is a vast conspiracy to destroy you and argumentativeness and self-important behaviour. Roy leads to think that Jude is obnoxious and condescending when he is “well” and trembling with fear when he is “ill”, when in fact both are symptoms of the same illness.
Trey’s attempted report, Patricia’s sudden anger when she thinks Trey “dumps” her and Jude’s paranoid delusions are the only scenes where Roy dramatizes the teens’ illnesses. The stigma society still holds toward the mentally ill is discussed but not dramatized. In one awkward scene Roy has Jude tell us how he never cleans his room because the world is going to be taken over by aliens so soon that there’s no point. Yet, a few minutes later he proposes joining the “Beyond the Cuckoo’s Nest” programme developed by CAMH, a real programme where students with mental illnesses go into schools to discuss how their condition impacts their life. How does it make sense that Jude suddenly drops his habitual condescension and wants to get the group to help others when he can’t be bothered to clean he room since life as we know it is about to end?
The play’s end is unsatisfying because, Trey, who has managed to overcome his fear of speaking of his condition to others, for no apparent reason, does not join Jude and Patricia when they are about to begin their school presentation. And then the play ends just before their presentation starts – just at the point where we would finally get to hear them reflect on their condition and their lives.
The show is thus quite frustrating. The CAMH website speaks of the value of the “Beyond the Cuckoo’s Nest” and states how two students who participated “empowered themselves by assuming the healthy role of becoming educators. They bravely answered the students’ questions, knowing that their stories will teach youth that people with mental illness aren't violent, uncontrollable criminals the media have made them out to be”. It would be great if Roy could somehow show how Jude and Patricia empower themselves this way.
Because the play involves only four characters and their interactions occur primarily when they are simply sitting and talking, the show would seem better suited to Young People’s Theatre’s smaller space. Andy Moro has designed a fairly abstract set with a long pentagonal opening that only takes on any identity under the fantastic still and moving projections he has designed. His animation of the words flying about Trey’s head as he tries to give his speech is a great effect and the outer space projections he uses to show Jude’s preoccupations are stunning.
All four actors give excellent performances. One virtue of Roy’s play is that he has captured the way teenagers actually speak, and under his direction, Edwards, Flemming and McMurtry-Howlett, though clearly older, do a fine job of speaking and moving like teenagers. Roy gives Flemming the widest range to convey, but one wishes that Roy has helped us see an obsession focus on self as the link between his arrogance and paranoia. Roy probably doesn’t want to confuse us by giving Cathy a personality, so we see only her professional side – rational, stern yet caring, eager to listen and facilitate discussions. Soo Garay brings as much as she can to this uninteresting role.
As with some plays that YPT produces, the value of Beyond the Cuckoo’s Nest does not lie in the play itself but in it function as an impetus for discussion. It is certainly an important topic to discuss and the fact that a play about teens and mental illness exists will just in itself help such teens in the audience to feel that they are not alone. Nevertheless, the play would be far more effective if it had real dramatic impact beyond its pedagogical function.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Brendan McMurtry-Howlett, David Patrick Flemming and Miranda Edwards. ©2012 Daniel Alexander.
For tickets, visit http://youngpeoplestheatre.ca.
2012-05-11
Beyond the Cuckoo’s Nest