Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
✭✩✩✩✩
by Judith Thompson, directed by Katherine Kaszas
Canadian Stage Company, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
September 20-October 13, 2001
“Habitat is a Shambles”
There's no point in beating about the bush: "Habitat" is the worst Canadian play I've seen so far this year. If the play were by a newcomer there might be some excuse for its weakness. But no, the author is Judith Thompson, twice winner of both the Chalmers Award and the Governor General's Award. It is depressing to see an acclaimed author fail so miserably. It is also depressing to see such a fine cast attempting to make sense of such a muddled work. The play is so riddled with errors, it is best just to list them.
Plot: Lewis Chance has bought an expensive home on the exclusive Mapleview Lanes in order to turn it into a home for troubled teens. We are supposed to be surprised and angered (though are not) that the neighbourhood led by the lawyer daughter of a long-time resident opposes this and ultimately forces Chance and his home out. Thompson wants to rally us about the social injustice of the situation and reveal the callousness of the rich, but the situation as set up is implausible and the result (and politics) totally predictable. Nowhere does she explain where Chance, who has a criminal record, has managed to get more than $600,000 to spend on a house nor why he should so stupidly choose to set up a group home in a neighbourhood he already know will oppose it. We learn that Chance skims money from the home to send to his poverty-stricken mother. Why then did he not buy a less expensive home to have more to help her?
Characters: Thompson has neglected to give her characters consistency. She wants us to see that Chance, despite his flaws, is a fighter for social justice against the rich. Unfortunately, his flaws besides the money skimming include having had sex with a male ward. It's hard to see him as daring when in fact he is clearly untrustworthy and foolish.
A girl named Raine hates her father and his girlfriend and goes to live in the home when her mother dies. In the first scenes she is depicted as an usually inarticulate Canadian version of a Valley Girl. In Act 2 she suddenly becomes an orator declaiming in long elaborate speeches. Did she learn this in the group home she hates? I think not. Just after one especially expended speech, we find that she has just tried to commit suicide. While this makes no sense especially after her impassioned attack on all forms of discrimination, Thompson has neglected to gives us any indication that Raine's mood is so fragile or in any way declining.
Chance's main opponent is Catherine, identified as a lawyer. However, her legal training seemed to have given her no skills in public speaking or logic. She doesn't know, for instance, that Chance cannot legally show her confidential documents about the home's residents. She constantly claims the home has a right to exists, yet spearheads the movement to oust it. Catherine's mother, Margaret Deacon, fears for her safety when the group home is opened, yet seems to view those who break and enter her home as possible friends. She views Raine as a daughter just after she breaks in and later is convinced of the evils of her prejudice when another home resident, Sparkle, does likewise. Sparkle is the only characters who actions are consistent since his nature is supposed to be erratic and dangerous. Why at the end he and Raine burn down the home (I assume, though it is unclear, it is the group home not Mrs. Deacon's) is unknown or why their new-found status as street kids should make them elated.
All five cast members give fine performances--Stephen Ouimette (a folksy Down East Lewis Chance, Kristina Nicoll (Raine's dying mother Janet and the uptight Catherine), Corinne Conley (the depressed then outraged Margaret Deacon, Holly Lewis (the tough girl Raine) and Luke Kirby (the unpredictable Sparkle). But in this case acting alone, no matter how good, cannot hide the flaws that make these would-be serious characters seem ridiculous.
Theme: As I have suggested one can hear the sound of Birkenstocks padding the floor has Thompson trots out her warmed-over 1960's politics. The play might have seemed with it 35 years ago, but it seems totally out of touch. The attack on NIMBYism is too clichéd to arouse interest. What is worse the play becomes extraordinarily pretentious. The newly eloquent Raine recalls partway through Act 2 that her (hated) father is Jewish and compares the Mapleview residents' treatment of the group home kids to the Nazi's treatment of Jews and homosexuals. She then ranges through other examples of genocide including the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda. Needless to say, Thompson's structure is too feeble to support such weight.
Director Katherine Kaszas has no clues to remedying this mess except to add sound designer Richard Feren's jetlike whooshes between every short scene in a vain attempt to create tension where there is none. Shawn Kerwin has create a design that is cleverer than the play. It is a diamond of real grass with a few tress. Margaret's living room is in one corner of the grass and Chance's on the other, thus suggesting the artificiality of borders and divisions of land. John Munro's lighting effectively indicates the many locations of the action.
The failure of the play has wider implications. "Habitat" is the first play commissioned in CanStage's partnership with the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, England. Since the play is going to represent Canada abroad, how is it no one had the courage to tell Thompson her play is just not good enough? Receipt of past annually-decided awards is no guide to present quality. If the CanStage equivalent of a building inspector had done her job, this "Habitat" would have been condemned.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Stephen Ouimette, Holly Lewis and Corinne Conley. ©2001 CanStage.
2001-10-04
Habitat