Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✭✩
by Jordi Mand, directed by Kelly Thornton
Nightwood Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
September 20-October 7, 2012
Marion: “It’s hard, you know...whether you have a child or not...it’s hard.”
Jordi Mand’s Between the Sheets is like a string of firecrackers – there’s a shock every few minutes until the final bang blows you away. Mand’s subject for the hour-long play is one of the archetypal scenes of soap operas – a wife confronts the woman with whom her husband is having an affair – but Mand has the talent to make this confrontation fresh and exciting. It’s fun, as at the final preview I attended, when revelations bring audible gasps from the audience. Expert pacing from director Kelly Thornton and sizzling performances from Susan Coyne and Christine Horne as the two women will have you on the edge of your seat throughout the action and give you much to discuss once the play is over.
The play is set in the Grade 3 classroom of Teresa (Horne), created with amazing attention to detail by designer Kelly Wolf. Teresa has been hosting her semi-annual parent/teacher interviews all day and is ready to go home, when Marion (Coyne) suddenly appears at the door. Teresa is surprised to see Marion because Marion’s husband Curtis has said neither he nor his wife would be attending that day. Nevertheless, Marion is determined to discuss the progress of her son Alex in the class. We can sense from the beginning through the aggressive way that Coyne has Marion pose her questions that she has some other agenda in mind besides discussing her son’s marks. For her part, Horne shows that Teresa is unnerved by Marion’s attitude but tries to repress her fears to conduct herself in as professional a way as possible. The first half hour is a masterpiece of acting and tension as we contrast the ways the two women attempt to smother their emotions – an action that only leads us to suspect what is wrong long before it bursts out.
Marion is the more calculating of the two by using common parent/teacher issues as a means of seeing how much she can frighten Teresa. Who of the two women has more contact with Alex? Who of the two has the right to decide whether he has special needs or not? Why does all the information about Alex and school activities reach Curtis but never Marion? Anyone who knows a grade school teacher or parents of grade school children will have heard these questions, but here they take on a particularly ominous tone.
Once Marion reveals the real purpose of her visit, Mand manipulates the action down unexpected paths. By the very nature of the encounter certain clichéd topics naturally arise, but Mand finesses shifts in our sympathies so expertly from one to the other and back that near the end the evidence for and against the arguments of each have almost equal weight – that is, until Mand drops a final bombshell.
Between the Sheets is so well constructed and touches on so many larger topics beyond the initial set-up of wife versus other woman such as control, empathy aging and disappointment that the play is likely to have a long life beyond this its world premiere. Mand as a gift for writing dialogue that sounds completely natural and for uncovering the conversational strategies that people use so subtly to defend themselves and attack each other. This hour-long world premiere has the heft of a full-length play and makes an exciting start to Nightwood Theatre’s 33rd season.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Susan Coyne and Christine Horne. ©2012 John Lauener.
For tickets, visit www.nightwoodtheatre.net.
2012-09-21
Between the Sheets