Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
✭✭✭✩✩
by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, directed by Justin Tensen
Three Seeds Productions, The StoreFront Theatre, Toronto
September 13-29, 2013
“Young Artists in Love”
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s Shoreditch Madonna from 2005 is like a modern day version of Théodore Barrière and Henri Murger’s play La vie de bohème (1849) that became the basis for Puccini’s opera La Bohème (1896). Instead of dealing with a group of starving artists in the Latin Quarter of Paris, it deals with a group of young artists who run an exhibition space in Shoreditch in the East End of London and have largely given up the making of art for the selling of it. Lenkiewicz’s play has a number of effective, well-observed scenes but in the end it doesn’t seem to have much to say.
Lenkiewicz focusses on two friends Michael (Jimi Shlag) and Nick (Robbie Beniuk) who, with their artist friend Hodge (Sean Connolly Affleck), now spend all their time running an exhibition space. They are currently preparing for a forum with the once-famous artist Devlin (Earl Pastko), who has been unable to create since the death of his daughter and has done time in prison for sex with an underaged girl. Scenes of the men alternate with scenes of a mysterious young woman named Christina (Sasha Higgins), who is mourning the suicide of her heroin-addicted boyfriend Charlie. Meanwhile, another woman, Martha (Lina Roessler), seeks out the gallery-owners as a way to speak to Devlin.
All the characters are dealing with loss and love in some way and are trying to find something that will fill the emptiness they feel. Christine hugs her pillow and calls it Charlie. Hodge dances with a female mannequin. One of the play’s main flaws, however, is that Lenkiewicz spends so much time in creating atmosphere that she doesn’t get around to making the relationships among the characters clear until the second act. As Act 1 creeps on, we start to wonder if Lenkiewicz is ever going to start formulating a plot or whether the play is just supposed to be some kind of slice of life of the artsy set in modern London. I wasn’t surprised to hear two people snoring during Act 1 nor to see that some of the audience did not return for Act 2.
Missing Act 2, however, would be a mistake because Lenkiewicz finally reveals the personal tensions among the characters that might have kept us more awake in Act 1. In Act 1 we learned that Nick had agreed to be filmed by Christina, but we didn’t know his interest in her was anything more than pity for the depth of her mourning. In Act 2 we discover that he has actually fallen in love with her. In Act 1 we knew nothing about Michael’s personal life. In Act 2 we discover that he is in love with Nick so that Nick’s interest in Christina only adds to his hidden suffering. In Act 1 we learned that Martha wanted to see her former teacher and lover Devlin after a separation of twelve years. In Act 2 we discover she has more in mind than merely meeting him again.
For these reasons Act 2 is far more engaging than Act 1 since Lenkiewicz has finally let us in on what the stakes are for her characters. Nevertheless, the way she ends the play is as unsatisfying as the way she begins it. The way the Christina-Nick plot develops is plausible, but Lenkiewicz resorts to a bolt from the blue near the very end to conclude the Martha-Devlin plot. In so doing, Lenkiewicz completely neglects the plot involving Michael, Nick and Hodge that began the play. In Act 2 Devlin says he is not going through with the forum. Devlin leaves them in the lurch, and by omitting to relate the impact of the Devlin’s decision on the three friends, the playwright leaves us in the lurch, too. Nor do we know if the three have finally accommodated themselves to never creating art again.
Despite all this, many individual scenes are interesting simply as dramatic scenes in themselves. This is due in great part to the intensely truthful performances director Justin Tensen has drawn from his excellent cast. Sasha Higgins plays the emotionally stunned, drug-addled Christina to perfection. Higgins has Christina speak with such deliberateness that we feel Christina is using all her strength merely to stay in one piece. Higgins makes Christina such an epitome of sorrow that it is surprising that she is not the madonna of the title. She is the only character who at the time of the action is not in Shoreditch.
The words “Shoreditch Madonna” are used only once and then as Devlin’s description of Martha. Lina Roessler, who constantly reminded me of Emma Thompson in the inner strength she emanates, makes Martha a very appealing character. Unlike Christina, who seems constantly on the verge of imploding, Roessler’s Martha seems to have been through a bad time but has survived it and emerged reinvigorated and self-sufficient.
Reuben Looyenga has ingeniously solved the problems of a play that takes place in several locations. This he does by subdividing the large acting space of the StoreFront Theatre into several smaller spaces by white translucent curtains running both the length of the acting area along the sides and perpendicular to it across the front. We shift from scene to scene simply by having actors open curtains to reveal one space while closing others to hide another. Grace Cacciatore’s costumes reflect the nature of each of the characters and in Christina’s case reveal her traversal of the stages of mourning.
Tensen, making his directorial debut, gives the show a steady if rather too leisurely pace. This tends to exacerbate the lack of momentum already present in Act 1 of the play. It’s not surprising that the running time of the present production is about a half hour longer than the two hours and 15 minutes of the original London production. Nevertheless, Tensen does achieve something with his cast that doesn’t happen in many productions. I found that by Act 2 I had started thinking of the characters as real people and not as characters in a play. For someone who sees as many plays as I do this was an unusual experience and I was grateful for it.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Sasha Higgins and Robbie Beniuk; (middle) Lina Roessler and Earl Pastko. ©2013 Austin Ball.
For tickets, visit www.artsboxoffice.ca.
2013-09-14
Shoreditch Madonna