Reviews 2016
Reviews 2016
✭✭✩✩✩
by Geoffrey Simon Brown, directed by Peter Pasyk
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
October 26-November 27, 2016
“Six characters in search of something to say”
Geoffrey Simon Brown may have won the RBC Emerging Playwright Award this year, but his play The Circle is so inept it’s a mystery the Tarragon Theatre committed to presenting its Toronto premiere. Brown’s play that purports to present a slice of millennial life has no plot, flimsy sketches instead of characters, tedious dialogue, flashbacks that illuminate nothing and a forced, improbable ending. Brown may be trying to show us how boring the lives of millennials are, but that doesn’t mean that a play about them also should be boring. The Circle may be only 75 minutes but it feels like three times that length. The best thing about the production is the high level of its acting, but given the material it seems like a waste of time and talent.
The point of the play seems to be to give audiences a glimpse into the lives of millennials by showing us a high school garage party somewhere in the suburbs of Calgary, the 26-year-old playwright’s home town. 18-year-old Ily (Jakob Ehman), who makes his money mostly through drug-dealing, lives with his girlfriend Amanda (Vivien Endicott-Douglas), in the garage of Amanda’s mother’s house. Ily has invited over his friend Will (Daniel Ellis), who will be bringing along his boyfriend Daniel (Jake Vanderham), whom Ily and Amanda are anxious to meet. Against Amanda’s wishes, Ily has also invited over his childhood friend Tyler (Brian Solomon), about whom Amanda has heard nothing good, and Tyler has invited along his girlfriend Kit (Nikki Duval), turning what was supposed to be just a small get-together into a party.
Brown has the party guests arrive all at the same time which leads him into expository difficulties. All he can think of doing is having the teens ask each other questions like “What do you do?”, “How old are you?”, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”, “Where do you live?” and “How do you like school?” as if they were beginning students in English as a Second Language.
From this mind-numbingly rudimentary dialogue we learn that Amanda is good at school, Will has ADHD, Daniel’s father is a priest, Kit has run away from home and Tyler, who now calls himself Mutt, is homeless and disruptive. Along the way the teens, who seem to have nothing to talk about, smoke cigarettes, drink, inhale pot through Ily’s collection of bongs and even get into nitrous oxide and THC. As the substance abuse escalates, Mutt’s behaviour worsens. He picks fights with people, breaks or wrecks Ily’s possessions and becomes generally disagreeable. Ily and Mutt hay have been friends once, but it now appears that Mutt nurses some sort of resentment against him.
Any of Mutt’s disruptions could have warranted his being ejected from the party, but Brown almost arbitrarily chooses the breaking point to be when Mutt calls Will a “faggot”. At this, the universally foul-mouthed group who have been casually insulting each other with unprintable expressions all through the action suddenly become outraged with newfound political correctness and as one turn against Mutt. This leads to a highly improbable accident that looks no more likely on stage under Peter Pasyk’s direction. After this the play concludes with a would-be profound epiphany that is both forced and unearned.
Two haphazard flashbacks prevent the otherwise realistic play from achieving complete naturalism. In one we learn more about Will and Daniel’s relationship. In the other, we learn that Mutt and Kit have nowhere to sleep. The only useful information these flashbacks provide is that Mutt contacts Ily, not to renew their friendship as much as to find a place to stay.
From all of Brown’s inane dialogue all we learn about his group of six teen is that they mostly don’t like school, they don’t get along with their parents, they don’t really want to work and they can’t wait to turn eighteen so they can buy booze and cigarettes and get married. None of this provides any insight into modern teens and only seems to confirm adults’ prejudices.
Besides that, Brown and the design team don’t have much of handle on modern teen culture. A couple of the teens have smartphones. So why aren’t they texting, gaming or taking selfies like real teens do? Brown has one teen make a totally out-of-date reference to “The Brady Bunch” that somehow all the rest understand and Mutt talks about using a Discman that might have been big in the 1980s but not the 2000s. Costume designer Joanna Yu has Kit dressed in full goth regalia and makeup and Daniel dressed as a preppie as if it were still the 1980s.
The best aspect of the production is the natural acting from the six cast members, five of whom are making their Tarragon debuts. It’s difficult to speak of them as creating characters since Brown has not really given them any even partially rounded characters to create. Jakob Ehman and Vivien Endicott-Douglas do predictably fine work, though its hard to know why a smart girl like Amanda is letting lowlife like Ily live in her mother’s house. As Will and Daniel, Daniel Ellis and Jake Vanderham make a believable couple with Will more comfortable with his sexuality than the straight-laced Daniel. As Kitt, Nikki Duval brings a much-needed sense of humour to the play simply through her ironic tone of voice. As Tyler/Mutt, Brian Solomon is a magnetic presence who seems to exude danger from his first entrance. While Solomon is of Irish and Anishnaabe descent, no roles in the play, including Mutt, is intended for any specific ethnic background In fact, Brown the playwright played the role himself when the work premiere in Calgary in 2015.
Brown may have won an award as an emerging artist, but The Circle demonstrates that he still has a lot more emerging to do before he can fly. The best recent play about collective teen guilt, if that is what Brown is aiming at, is Jordan Tannahill’s Concord Floral from 2014. In Concord Floral the level of dramatic invention, the finely wrought speeches and the ability to tell an engaging story all leave an uninventive, uninsightful play like Brown’s far back in the dust. Director Peter Pasyk has assembled an exciting cast, however, and one looks forward to seeing more of their work in future in more fulfilling projects.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) Jakob Ehman as Ily; Daniel Ellis, Jake Vanderham, Nikki Duval, Brian Solomon, Jakob Ehman and Vivien Endicott-Douglas. ©2016 Cylla von Tiedemann.
For tickets, visit www.tarragontheatre.com.
2016-10-28
The Circle