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written and directed by Caroline Azar

Theatre-a-go-go, Next Stage Theatre Festival, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

January 8-18, 2015

“Dismal Impression, No Kudos”

There’s no point in mincing words about it.  Caroline Azar’s latest play DINK is absolutely terrible and a waste of the 90 minutes it takes to endure it.  How it was ever selected to be one of the ten plays that make up the 2015 Next Stage Theatre Festival is a complete mystery.  Surely there had to be something better.  Azar’s play does accomplish one remarkable feat – it manages to be flawed in more ways than almost any flawed play I have seen in the last few years.

The title DINK, a pejorative abbreviation meaning “double income, no kids”, gives you no clue as to the play’s subject matter.  The term applies to the central couple Bill and Deb (David Keeley and Sharon Heldt) because they both work and have no children, but otherwise it is irrelevant since the play is not about the perceived selfishness of DINKs nor the benefits of two incomes.  Rather the play is about a serial killer.

Curiously, for a play with this subject, the actions begins with a musical number sung by Andrea Brown and Lise Cormier.  The gist of the song is “We are here”, a point that seems rather self-evident since the two are singing the song.  The song might make sense if it occurred later in the play when we discover that the characters played by Brown and Cormier, D.T. and Izzy, are two of the killer’s victims.  But at the start of the play with no context established the song is meaningless.

After the song the action shifts to a Holt Renfrew in Ottawa, where Deb and her young sister Lolly (Christy Bruce) are airing complaints about their nouveau riche lives.  This portion is the best written and most closely observed of the show since Azar gets the playful but snide tone of the sisterly banter just right.  Lolly makes fun of Deb and Bill as the perfect couple who speak baby talk to each other and keep in constant phone contact.  Meanwhile, she complains about her own useless husband (never seen) who has had Botox injections to look younger.  Lolly is also worried that they have not yet caught the man who seems to be stalking her daughter.

After leading us to believe that the play will be a light satire of mindless consumerism, Azar changes scenes to an encounter between Bill and a detective inspector Matt De Souza (Kris Siddiqi).  Bill is helping Matt with his inquiries but Azar does not tell us they what these are.  Azar gives us no clue when or where this scene is taking place so that when the next scene shifts to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and Bill appears we can only assume that that is where he is.  Only much later does Azar make it clear that the scenes between Matt and Bill are happening in the Ottawa region and those in Kandahar are happening in the past.  In the first Kandahar scene we meet Cormier as Izzy, who has been sent to Afghanistan to set up a Tim Horton’s shop on the Canadian base to make the troops feel more at home.  One of those troops is an African-Canadian Danielle Bryce, known as D.T., who is immediately attracted to the naive Izzy. 

As Azar haphazardly skips between the inane shopping conversation of Deb and Lolly at Holt’s, Matt’s questioning of Bill and the growing relationship between D.T. and Izzy in Kandahar, we eventually discover that Bill is being held as the prime suspect in a series of serial killings in the Ottawa area, among which D.T. and Izzy, after the troops were redeployed home, became two of the victims.  When we see Bill in Kandahar, he expresses his profound disgust for D.T. and Izzy as lesbians and threatens to inform the Taliban on them which would lead to their deaths.

Through all this, it is completely unbelievable that it never occurs to Deb to wonder where her husband is.  How is it possible that she cannot know that he is being held and questioned?  Is she so consumed with her home renovations that the police did not want to disturb her?  After Bill has been revealed as a possible serial killer, one would think Azar would concentrate on that aspect of the story.  But no, she decides to pursue Lolly’s continuing irritation with her husband through one-sided conversations with him and give us glimpses into the past of Matt and Izzy, since they were apparently friends before Izzy went off to Afghanistan.  These scenes have absolutely no relevance to the central story and function simply as padding.  The same is true of the songs for D.T. and Izzy that seem to comment on the action, but mostly take up time. Besides, Brown and Cormier do not enunciate the awkward lyrics clearly enough so that we know what they are singing about anyway.

In one of the most inept scenes in the play, Azar has Deb seek out Lolly at Holt’s looking for comfort after she finally learns what Bill is accused of.  One might think that multiple murders would overshadow all other topics, but what most concerns the sisters is that it turns out it was Bill who was stalking Lolly’s daughter and stole her panties.  The preposterousness of the sisters’ priorities is so great it is ridiculous.

As if there were no more dramaturgical sins to commit, Azar decides to introduce a new character two-third of the way into the show.  This is Bethany (Jasmine Chen), Lolly’s adopted Chinese daughter whose panties were stolen.  Azar has managed to get by with never presenting us with Lolly’s husband, so why present us with her daughter.  The main reason seems to be that it allows Azar to extend the play from 60 to 90 minutes by repeating all the information we already know, only this time with Bethany’s input.  Unfortunately, for our waning interest, Bethany’s point of view adds nothing new to what we already know. 

Then, just to commit one last dramaturgical sin, after having padded the play to be much longer than it needs to be, Azar simply stops the action rather than bringing it to a satisfying conclusion.  There are supposedly “more bodies”, but by the end Bill has still refused to say where they are.  Worse, Azar has failed to give Bill any motivation for his killings.  The scenes in Kandahar had led to think he was anti-gay, but had not explored why his homophobia should focus only on women.  Then we learn he was the one who had stolen Bethany’s panties.  Bethany is not gay.  So what exactly is Bill’s problem with women?  Deb thinks that Bill and she are happily married.  How has he managed to deceive her, and for how long?  Azar provides a flashback to the time when Bill and Deb first met, but it sheds no light on the question.  Azar has Bill speak at various times about quantum physics, but never relates it to Bill’s worldview, much less his perversion. 

Azar also directs, but unsurprisingly is unable to draw convincing performances from the cast.  Keeley was clearly attracted to the chance to play an outright villain for a change, but though he is great at being icy, Azar has given him little to work with.  Heldt and Bruce are best in the catty comedic scenes at the beginning, but feel lost when the tone turns melodramatic.  The growing relationship that Brown and Cormier act out as D.T. and Izzy has the ring of possibility to it, even if Izzy says she’s not gay.  Siddiqi seems to sleepwalk through his role, and it’s hard to know what Chen is trying to convey in hers.

Under the Skin (1985) by Betty Lambert, staged in Toronto just last year, is an excellent play by a Canadian woman about woman who suspects that her husband is a serial killer.  It, too, is 90 minutes long, but Lambert uses the time to explore how a husband’s abusive relationship with his wife gradually leads her to believe that he is the one responsible for murders of women in the area.  Unlike Azar’s play where too many scenes are repetitive or irrelevant, Lambert’s play is filled with tension as an ordinary housewife awakens to the fact that her husband may be a monster.  By focussing on the central couple, Lambert’s play demonstrates infinitely deeper insight into the relation of gender, politics and power. 

In contrast, Azar’s play is completely unfocussed.  Her characters, except for D.T. and Izzy, are caricatures, her storytelling confusing and presentation an awkward mix of naturalistic and non-naturalistic styles.  Since Azar’s play in no way supersedes Lambert’s, the only reason to see it is as a lesson in how not to write a play.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: David Keeley, Jasmine Chen, Lise Cormier and Andrea Brown. ©2015 Guntar Kravis.

For tickets, visit http://fringetoronto.com.