Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✩✩✩
by Erin Shields, directed by Andrea Donaldson
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
April 9-May 4, 2014
“Untempting”
Erin Shields’s latest play, Soliciting Temptation, now having its world premiere at the Tarragon, begins to outstay its welcome about halfway through its 80 minutes. This is because it begins with an unbelievable premise that becomes less believable the longer the play goes on. Two further unlikely twists that come later clarify nothing. The fact that the play is staged in the same configuration as the play Lungs, which preceded it, only highlights how much more vital and innovative that play was than this.
On the square stage faced on two side by the audience, we find Ken Mackenzie’s set that, along with Thomas Ryder Payne’s background sound, instantly conjures up an airless, overheated room in a budget hotel in an unknown Asian city. Here we find an unnamed Man (Derek Boyes), soaking in sweat, trying unsuccessfully to get either the overhead fan or the air-conditioner to work. When he answers the knock at the door he finds a young nameless Girl (Miriam Fernandes), bathed in Kimberly Purtell’s glowing light and accompanied by Payne’s spacey music.
We assume that the Man has hired a child prostitute but she refuses ever to answer his question about how old she is. When, quite surprisingly, she does speak, it is to unleash a long tirade criticizing this middle-aged white male’s assumptions about sex tourism, legalized prostitution and child prostitution in particular. The Girl launches into the Man with such vehemence, he barely gets in a word and even when he does she gives no credit to what he says. Because he simply solicited the services of a prostitute, although no sex act occurred, the Girl plans to inform the Man’s wife, daughter and business about it. She is able to do this because Shields has had the Man, in an incredibly stupid move, write his hotel room number on the back of his business card.
Just when we think Shields is attempting to write an Asian version of David Mamet’s Oleanna (1992), the Girl is bitten by one of the unknown vermin lurking in the ceiling and goes into anaphylactic shock. By an extraordinary coincidence, the Man, whose daughter has a peanut allergy, happens to have an EpiPen (an epinephrine autoinjector) in his suitcase, gives the stricken Girl a dose and thus saves her life. Once she comes to, the Girl is hardly grateful, claiming the Man “invaded” her body, and continues as before.
Indeed, the only hold the Girl has over the Man is her threat to inform on him. Shields for unknown reasons assumes that an anonymous call from a prostitute (who is not a prostitute) will automatically be believed and cause the Man’s ruin. Since, however, she has lied about who she is why should anyone believe what she says?
Before the play ends, Shields throws us another curve as hard to believe as the handy EpiPen. And the play closes with the same mysterious image of the Girl in the doorway. If this is meant to suggest all we have seen is the guilty nightmare of the Man, then it is too bad we should have been caught up in the dream of such an unimaginative person.
It is great to see Derek Boyes assay a leading role for a change. It’s too bad that the role is the typical bumbling, good-hearted man he so often plays. Only in the last part of the play where he has the chance to reveal the Man as a connoisseur of sensuality, do we get to see the wider range Boyes is capable of. Until she speaks, Miriam Fernandes does appear to be a shy helpless teenager. Afterwards, she makes the Girl as unpleasantly forceful and overbearing as Shields seems to intend.
Shields wants to takes up as many issues involved in child prostitution as possible, but she has created a situation where there is too much disbelief for us willingly to suspend. Her argumentation does not flow naturally either. When the Man tells the Girl that she sounds like a Wikipedia article, he is exactly right. Shields has not managed to merge her impulse toward didacticism with drama. The play, although about an important topic, is unengaging and we wind up caring little or nothing about either character. We can only wish Shields better luck with her next play.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Miriam Fernandes and Derek Boyes; Derek Boyes and Miriam Fernandes. ©2014 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit http://tarragontheatre.com.
2014-04-10
Soliciting Temptation