Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✭✩
by Stewart Lemoine, directed by Ron Jenkins
The Theatre Department, Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, Toronto
January 16-February 2, 2014
“Mrs. Tilford Goes to Ecuador”
Stewart Lemoine is a renowned playwright in Edmonton but is barely known in Toronto. He’s written more than 65 plays, received seven Sterling Awards for his plays, received a Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal in 2003 and a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2013. He did win a Dora for Best Play in 1986, but has been heard of out here little since. Luckily, fellow Edmontonian Ron Pederson has set out to change that. In 2012 he directed an acclaimed production of Lemoine’s The Exquisite Hour (2002). Now he appears in the Toronto premiere of Lemoine’s 1997 comedy Pith! It turns out to be a thoroughly charming work written by a playwright who clearly loves the attitudes and styles of language of other periods.
Contrary to what you might think, Pith! is not the story of a lisping urologist. In reality, Pith! avoids crudeness in word and deed as much as a post-code Hollywood movie of the Thirties. It concerns itinerant sailor Jack Vail (Pederson), who in 1931 decides to rest for a time in Providence, Rhode Island. One suspects that Lemoine has chosen this location because it allows him to pun on the word “providential”. This is perfectly fine given the playful artifice of the entire work. Thus, Jack’s path providentially crosses that of a reclusive widow, Mrs. Tilford (Daniela Vlaskalic), and her companion/housekeeper Nancy (Amy Matysio). From Nancy, Jack discovers that Mrs. Tilford has been in mourning for the past ten years after her husband disappeared while seeking a silver mine in Ecuador. Except for attending church, she keeps to her house and sits in the dark listening to Rosa Ponselle albums.
Jack, moved by Nancy’s unhappiness at her situation and that of her employer, decides that he can help them. Posing as an “adjuster” from the Federal Government, Jack gains entry to Mrs. Tilford’s house. Contrary to what Mrs. Tilford expects, Jack is not a financial adjuster but a furniture adjuster who, as a seeming early practitioner of feng shui, says that he can lighten Mrs. Tilford’s sadness by rearranging her furniture to improve the circulation of ions. Jack is on the verge of being thrown out when he says that by his method he can show Mrs. Tilford where her husband is. Skeptical, Mrs. Tilford with Nancy and Jack embarks on an imaginary quest by train and boat into the jungle of eastern Ecuador – all the while never leaving Mrs. Tilford’s living room.
As the plot should indicate, this is whimsy of the highest degree. On one level, we enjoy the adventure because of the sheer theatricality of the mime involved and because of the hilarious series of characters Jack impersonates for the two female travellers to encounter. On another level, we can see that what Jack introduces the two women to is the magic of play itself and the license it gives to unleash the imagination. As such the play in its humble guise is an homage to the language and mores of 1930s Hollywood movies, especially those of Frank Capra, also becomes a celebration of theatre itself. Because of this, no matter how fanciful the show may be, it reaches a conclusion that is genuinely moving in its depiction of how theatre can help us cope with reality. “Pith” refers superficially to the helmets of the adventurers, more deeply to essence of play that they discover.
Pederson, himself, is a marvel. He speaks Lemoine’s period-infused lines with exactly the right intonation and emphasis. The bizarre characters he plays during the Ecuadorean journey show off his amazing ability to transform himslef completely. One moment he is a sleazy drawling New Orleans financier whose features seem in constant danger of sliding off his face, the next he is a high-strung Latin gigolo the two women meet on the boat to Guayaquil. His Swedish geologist seems to hail rather more from St. Petersburg than Stockholm, but his native guide, who, politically incorrect as it may be, speaks only an excited gibberish, is the most comic of all.
Matysio is a fine comedian herself and is especially funny the more we discover Nancy’s hidden skills from her Girl Scout days, such as making bird calls which she trades back and forth with Pederson, who at one point embodies the jungle and all its creatures. Vlaskalic’s Mrs. Tilford begins with impatience and imperiousness but gradually softens as she gets caught up in the imaginary adventure. She is expert at giving us the sense that Mrs. Tilford consciously gives in to all the silliness of this imaginary adventure because she knows how much she has harmed herself through her ten years of isolation. We feels that Jack’s project gives her the excuse to release herself from the bonds she placed on her life and on her imagination. Indeed, the journey gives her permission to imagine exactly the things she has so long forbade herself.
Director Ron Jenkins does an admirable job of never letting Lemoine’s homage to the Thirties slip into parody. He makes sure characters are absolutely serious about what they are doing no matter how bizarre it may appear to us. This dichotomy is, in fact, one of the main sources of delight in the piece. Andrea Mittler has designed a lovely set of period costumes and Siobhán Sleath’s lighting helps transport us from the beauty of the church setting to the gloom of Mrs. Tilford’s house to the exotic locales of the Ecuadorean voyage.
Judging simply from this one play, Lemoine has an approach to drama quite unlike that of any of his contemporaries. The warmth, gentle humour and emotion that Pith! calls forth makes us hope that Pederson and Vlaskalic’s company The Theatre Department will bring us more Stewart Lemoine in the future.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Amy Matysio, Ron Pederson and Daniela Vlaskalic; Amy Matysio, Ron Pederson and Daniela Vlaskalic. ©2014 Farrah Aviva.
For tickets, visit www.artsboxoffice.ca.
2014-01-18
Pith!