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by Morris Panych, directed by Douglas Beatty

Touchmark Theatre, River Run Centre, Guelph

November 3-11, 2000

“Railing at Silence”

Last year Douglas Beattie’s new Touchmark Theatre debuted in the Co-operators Hall of Guelph’s River Run Centre with the Tennessee Williams’ rarity “Kingdom of Earth”.  This year they return to the same venue with BC playwright Morris Panych’s 1995 black comedy “Vigil”.  This play has had numerous production in the US and Canada and is currently being held over yet again at the Studio Theater in Washington, DC.  If you have missed this wickedly funny show in its recent productions at the Tarragon in Toronto and the Grand Theatre in London, don’t pass up the chance to see it in a more intimate setting in Guelph. 

The story is about Kemp, a middle-aged man who has left his job at a bank and travelled more than a thousand miles to be at the bedside of his Aunt Grace, who he has not seen in thirty years.  She had written him to say she is “old and dying”, but his expectations of a quick inheritance of some sort are gradually frustrated by the woman who, for the next two years, shows no signs of major decline much less immanent death.  The play proceeds through a rapid series of very short scenes ringing every imaginable comic variation on Kemp’s increasing frustrated question, “Why aren’t you dead yet?”  Kemp, used to living a solitary existence, is content to insult his aunt, rail against the world and relate tales of his youth as the unloved child of an alcoholic mother who wanted him to be a girl and a manic-depressive father who was a failed magician—all without expectation of a response from his aunt, who indeed says nothing throughout the entire first act.  The explanation for this bizarre situation suddenly comes to light in the second act by means I will certainly not reveal lest I spoil the fun.  What I will say is that this explanation causes us to re-evaluate all that has gone on before and results in an entire shift of mood from the relentlessly cynical gallows humour that precedes it to an ending that is unexpectedly but genuinely moving.

To mount this fine production, Beattie has called on a cadre of some of the best-known people associated with the Stratford Festival.  The director is none other than Martha Henry, fresh from her success in directing “Elizabeth Rex”.  “Vigil” is a work that could be played in a number of different styles—from the zaniness of Monty Python to the menace of Pinter.  Henry has taken a realist approach in making the situations and statements, no matter how outlandish, arise from the characters.  This has great the advantage of making the characters who seem so absurd in the first act plausible and empathetic in the second, so that the total change of mood near the end becomes understandable.  We see it is merely the author’s delay in supplying key information that causes us to perceive the action of the first act as so bizarre since Panych wants us to see the absurd in the guise of the realistic. 

To that end, Allan Wilbee provides a naturalistic, very cozy apartment for Grace and appropriate costumes for her and the unkempt Kemp.  A major symbol in the set, visible during the frequent blackouts, is the luminous dial of the mantle clock, its hands whirling around.  We thus are never allowed to forget the themes of time and mortality even between scenes.  The play is beautifully lit by Louise Guinand, who not only gets to let us see the changing light of the season out the large window stage right but also highlights objects important to Henry’s interpretation of the play, particularly Grace’s Christmas gift to Kemp.  Luke de Ruiter provides clever, often humorous background sounds that let known what is happening in the wide world outside.

Stephen Woodjetts, best known to Stratford audiences as a composer and music director, appears as the self-absorbed Kemp.  Woodjetts decision to play Kemp as a bitchy homosexual may help the audience to pigeonhole his character earlier, but that is not necessarily a good thing.  Kemp explains that he has been so messed up by his unloving and repellant parents that he has become completely asexual.  He became disillusioned with life at such an early age that he has become the most cynical, morbid misanthrope you’ll ever hope not to meet.  He has no friends of any kind and his sole fond memory of contact with any other human being is of his aunt’s visit 30 years ago.  Henry and Woodjetts do make us glimpse this sense of desperation beneath Kemp’s constant outpourings of negativity.  The great advantage of Woodjett’s portrayal is that his manner is so completely deadpan that there is no sense that his character is aware that the outrageous things he says and does are funny.  This, of course, as the best actors and directors know, makes the comedy even more hilarious.  Henry and Woodjetts also perfectly control the transition in the second act when some of Kemp’s same statements and actions are no longer meant to evoke humour.

Joyce Campion is perfectly cast as Grace, a role she also played at the Tarragon.  Though silent through the entire first act, Campion has such presence  that a mere gesture or facial expression from her varied repertoire is more than enough to counterbalance Kemp’s stream of words.  When she does speak the few lines she has, we hang on her every word since each one is, as one might expect, crucial to our understanding of the  play.  As always she is a joy to watch and it is a pleasure to see her in such a major role.

Touchmark Theatre has thus scored another success and can only be good news to the community that their season has increased to two plays a year.  Do try to take in this play both for its own merits and since it makes a fascinating pairing with their next production, the great Irish comedy “The Playboy of the Western World”.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Joyce Campion and Stephen Woodjetts. ©2000 Touchmark Theatre.