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by Jez Butterworth, directed by Daryl Cloran

Theatrefront, Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs, Toronto

March 8-23, 2002

"They Got Their Mojo Workin'"

Following its highly successful production of "Our Country's Good" last year, Theatrefront brings us the Toronto première "Mojo" by British playwright Jez Butterworth.  After its world première at the Royal Court Theatre in 1995, Butterworth won at least three major awards for Best New Playwright and the play won the Olivier Award for Best Comedy.  The play has since influenced such Guy Ritchie films as "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" with its mixture of macabre humour, violence and expletive-laden language among low-life criminals.  But "Mojo" is theatrical not cinematic and in conjuring up so forcefully a world of impending chaos, we feel tragedy peering through the mask of comedy until suddenly the mask drops.

We first meet Sweets and Potts in a small room above a seedy bar where the latest singing sensation, Silver Johnny, has been packing them in.  It's the late 1950s and since the criminals' control of the jukebox trade is slipping they plan to move deeper into the entertainment industry itself.  Sweets and Potts are high on amphetamines and thus over-excited by a nighttime meeting in the next room between their boss Mickey, club-owner Ezra and Sam Ross, leader of a rival gang.  They mistakenly assume Ross plans to back Ezra and Mickey to make Silver Johnny a star in America.  Early the next morning, however, Mickey enters to announce that Ezra's body had been found behind the club in two trash cans and that Sam Ross has kidnapped Silver Johnny.  This unleashes a struggle for control of the club between Mickey and Ezra's seemingly psychotic son Baby.  Mickey orders the four to barricade themselves in the club while they await an attack by Sam Ross.  Meanwhile, the other three scramble to find where to place their allegiance.

The OED tells us that "mojo" means "Magic, the art of casting spells; a charm or amulet used in such spells";  it's given erotic connotations in blues songs from Muddy Waters to The Doors.  All the play's characters, caught in the midst of a struggle for power real or imagined, seek that talisman that will bring success, whether it is Baby's clothes that Skinny apes, Johnny's silver jacket or Silver Johnny himself.  This power is also sexual as evidenced in the criminals' vast repertoire of homosexual put-downs and come-ons.  The comedy of Sweets and Potts is that they think they are deeply involved with the action while in fact they are merely onlookers.  The others not so covertly vie for sexual favours. 

"We live in a new time", Mickey says, and he's right.  All the paraphernalia associated with the club suggests the end is near.  The jukebox of Act 1 symbolizing the game these scum are leaving behind; the antique cutlass that is their only weapon until Skinny brings back a tiny Derringer; and the two trash cans on stage through part of Act 1 and all of Act 2, an obvious reference to Beckett's "Endgame"--all these suggest an old system that will soon be replaced just as the music and mores of the time will be swept away in the next decade.  But the play is a critique of the 1990s as much as the 1950s.  The younger generation destroys the older in revenge for its hypocrisy and corruption.  Baby's own story is a perverted version of Abraham and Isaac.  But if Baby represents Butterworth's own older generation, it is even more to be feared.

The cast is tremendous.  Dylan Trowbridge and Christopher Morris are hilarious as the comic duo Sweets and Potts.  Their speed-induced, rapid-fire Cockney dialogue can seem pretty impenetrable especially in Act 1, but what comes through is their personalities along with verbal and physical comedy of hair-trigger precision.  Potts is the dreamer of the two, believing the bosses will reward his "discovery" of Silver Johnny and take him to the promised land of America which he seems to know only through Gershwin's "Summertime".  Sweets is the dimmer of the two who can't tell when to keep a secret and whom Potts constantly tries to infuse with his optimism.  They are Butterworth's equivalent of Shakespeare "wavering multitude" that Rumour plays upon, always ready to side with who they think will come out on top.

Damien Atkins is superb as Skinny Luke, showing a mixture of fear and ineffectual hauteur that is simultaneously funny and frightening.  Co-producer Michel Protti literally puts himself on the line for this show appearing though most of Act 2 in a highly uncomfortable position.

As Mickey, Blair Williams shows us a man trying to maintain a façade of strength while crumbling inside.  The underlying disquiet we at first assume is fear of reprisal turns out to be a gnawing guilt   Mike Shara is truly unsettling as the psychopath Baby.  Like the others, we at first assume his swings from sadism and dissociation are due to drugs.  When we learn later that he was sexually abused by his father, we take that as the reason.  By the end, however, we have to wonder if we've had a glimpse of evil itself.       

Director Daryl Cloran's precision and sharp pacing plus the intense performances he draws from the  cast insure that the tension never lets up.  In Act 2 when the amphetamines have worn off a greater dread takes their place.  Everything from pauses to fights is expertly judged to create the greatest impact.  Designer Lorenzo Savoini's has caught just the right blend of real and unreal in his sets, in Act 1 through an extremely forced perspective and in Act 2 through "girders" that curve instead of support, enhanced in each case by his edgy lighting.  Dana Osborne's costumes are accurate guides to period and character.

"Mojo" is  not for the easily offended, though in general the threats and descriptions of violence are worse and anything seen on stage.  In its mixture of comedy and horror, "Mojo" is very much like a modern Jacobean drama where the weak search for a talisman to give them power only to finds a death's-head.  Acting, direction and design of such a high calibre make this one of the most powerful productions in Toronto so far this season.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Dylan Trowbridge and Christopher Morris. ©2002 Theatrefront.