Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✭✩
by Rick Chafe, directed by Ann Hodges
Great Canadian Theatre Company, Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre, Ottawa
September 11-30, 2012
“The child is father of the man.” William Wordsworth
As a play, The Secret Mask from 2011 by Winnipeg writer Rick Chafe, is far too predictable. Yet, the production by the Great Canadian Theatre Company is so well conceived and the performances by the cast of such a high level that the play is one year you really must see. Indeed, it is a privilege just to watch Paul Rainville in the central role.
Chafe’s semi-autobiographical play involves George (Michael Mancini), who as the only known next of kin has been contacted by a hospital in Vancouver because his father Ernie (Paul Rainville) has had a stroke. George has much more to deal with than meeting his father after along period of non-communication because the stroke has left Ernie with aphasia, or impaired language ability. George is shocked to find that Ernie is working with a speech therapist Mae (Kate Hurman) on such infantile tasks as remembering the names of the parts of the face. A key point that Chafe is at pains to conceal until halfway through Act 1, but that the GCTC brochure reveals in its plot description, is that Ernie abandoned George and his mother 40 years ago when George was only two so that George has no real memory of Ernie and feels no bond with him. What so overwhelms George is that the question he most wants to ask, “Why did you abandon us?” is one that Ernie in his present state literally cannot answer.
What was going to be a just a short visit turns into an extended stay as George realizes that the vast array of duties he has had thrust upon him, including finding a nursing home for Ernie, are horrendously time-consuming. This, coupled with the fact that Ernie is man for whom he feels nothing but anger and with whom he cannot communicate, make his task even harder.
The story of a son getting to know the father he never knew is not exactly new. The GCTC programme even lists other books and films on this theme. Given how Chafe has framed the story we can predict practically from the introduction of the characters what the outcome of the Ernie-George plot will be. A secondary plot involving George and his wife and son becomes clear by the end of the first act, but otherwise Chafe never expands the theme of the play beyond that of interpersonal relationships.
Aphasia is a condition ripe with possible theatrical symbolism. Chafe does use it as a metaphor for the lack of communication between Ernie and George and for the same lack that grows between George and his unseen wife. This latter point Chafe could emphasize even more since it is a potent irony that the inability to communicate is certainly not restricted to people with medical problems. The fact that Ernie has to relearn language could be used to underscore the very arbitrariness of language in the relation of sound to object or concept. The neologisms Ernie makes up to express himself are more interesting than the “correct” word he should have chosen. In fact, Chafe could make the point that in order speak like a “normal” person” Ernie has to give up the creativity of his neologisms.
Even if Chafe does explore the central metaphor of his play as much as he could and even if his play does not entirely escape a sentimental movie-of-the-week structure, Chafe has created a wonderful central role in the character of Ernie. Whatever past characters traits Ernie may have had that led him to abandon his wife and child become irrelevant compared to his present struggle to regain language. This is how the situation immediately strikes us and how it eventually strikes George.
Rainville captures the complex mixture of hope, determination, frustration and despair as Ernie has to go back to trying to remember the names of objects pictured on cards Mae shows him. While Mae and we cheer on his success, Rainville shows how humiliating it feels to have to start again at square one at his age. He makes gradual progress throughout the play. When he can finally speak in longer sentences, he will substitute words for the ones he can’t remember. Part of the fun of the play – the difficulty of the role that Rainville has so well mastered – is that almost all of Ernie’s lines sound like nonsense. What does he mean about going back to his “square”? What does he mean that so many people in his address book are “cardboard”? Some of these substitutions seem to have no relation to what they refer to. Others, like the ones cited meaning “apartment” and “dead”, are metaphors. Chafe has written the play carefully so that as time goes on the metaphorical substitutions start to outnumber the nonsensical one and we feel we can start to understand Ernie even if his word choices are unconventional.
Parallel with our and George’s increased ability to understand Ernie’s language is George’s increased ability to understand Ernie as a person. Mancini makes us understand George’s frustration in having to spend so much time making decisions about the well-being of a man who, as far as he knows, cared nothing for him and his mother. As George’s own personal life starts to deteriorate he finally gains an interest in finding out what this man is like as a way of understanding himself. He comes to think that solving the mystery of his own abandonment will help him understand why his life is not working out as he has planned. In a fine performance Mancini shows us this gradual change from an impatient, self-involved, career-oriented businessman to the tolerant, caring young man at the end who looks to what is important in life not just in his work.
Kate Hurman is a real pleasure as Mae. Initially we think her baby language approach to talking with Ernie is just an example of the embarrassing way health care workers tend to speak to elderly patients until we realize that she does this with Ernie at first because she has to. As he improves Hurman has Mae adopt an increasingly less patronizing tone. Chafe does have Mae speak to George on a number of topics outside her area that no real speech therapist would be allowed to discuss with the son of a client, but we have to accept that Chafe has combined the roles of several types of health care and social worker into one for the convenience of the play. Even so, Chafe has Hurman play all the other minor roles in the play – from a bubble-headed teenaged waitress, to a by-the-rules bank teller, to a smarmy retirement home saleswoman. Hurman keeps each new role distinct with a complete change of voice and posture.
Like Ernie, the abstract set designed by Karyn McCallum, especially under Jock Munro’s inventive lighting, turns out to be full of surprises. Marc Desormeaux’s music enhances the subtle changes of mood.
Director Ann Hodges has carefully paced the play so that we are constantly re-evaluating our impressions of both Ernie and George. This is important because Chafe’s play is not just about the effects of an illness but about the characters ridding themselves of the prejudices they have towards each other and our ridding ourselves of the prejudices we have towards them. Chafe writes with the optimism that such a change in perception is possible and the play itself becomes a heart-warming demonstration that, indeed, it can happen.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Paul Rainville, Michael Mancini and Kate Hurman. ©2012 Wayne Cuddington.
For tickets, visit www.gctc.ca.
2012-09-27
The Secret Mask