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by Chris Earle, directed by Chris Abraham

Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

April 22-May 25, 2003

"Sliding Doors"

Chris Earle's latest play "Russell Hill" is a puzzle.  The physical production is excellent, the direction is taut and smart and the acting is superb.  But much of the audience remained in their seats after the final curtain call asking themselves "So, what was that all about?"

The play consists of eights scenes and a musical interlude involving various combinations of the six cast members.  Except for the first and last scenes no characters appear twice.  A father has trouble getting through to his perhaps autistic son on a subway platform; a man thanks a beggar he thinks has given him good luck; an older man visits a massage therapist; a man and woman who haven't seen each other for five years meet and recall the moment when he dumped her; a young wife and mother writes a letter to her foster child in Africa; a young man tells a widower about a film being shot in his neighbourhood; two women are on holiday in Mexico when the pool is being closed prematurely; the people we first saw on the subway platform witness a subway crash.  The common theme seems to be people hoping but failing to connect with each other.  Many of the scenes show characters who have been or want to be "saved" in some way, from pain, from failure, from neglect.  Earle has expertly written these scenes capturing often to hilarious effect the subtle ways in which people misunderstand each other's intentions.  These scenes on their own are the play's great strength.

Earle, however, in an effort to make these disparate scenes appear more cohesive has written a part for himself as a TTC conductor who is both the evening's emcee and a version of the Stage Manager of Wilder's "Our Town" who relates anecdotes about riding subways and living in Toronto and comments on scenes to point out their artifice.  Also interspersed with the eights scenes are excerpts from the inquest into the 1995 subway crash that occurred under Russell Hill in Toronto between the Dupont and St. Clair West stations.  Here Earle becomes the chief prosecutor hammering away at the driver of the train that caused the crash.  The other five cast members take turns playing the driver.

This is the least successful element of the show.  The episodes are too brief to suggest that the show is "about" the 1995 accident.  The accident may be the worst in TTC history, but with only three deaths it rather pales in comparison with the natural and man-made disasters that have so filled the news recently.  Earle actually mentions this point and lists some of these disasters so that one wonders why this particular accident was chosen at all except that it is local.  His mocking stance toward the subject matter and toward theatrical convention may be an attempt at some sort of deconstructive humour, but just when we fall in synch with the comic or tragic mood of a scene Earle the Emcee comes along and knocks us off the rails.  He may say that "tragedy is the new comedy" and discourse on the "sick joke" implying that this is what the play is, but the eight scenes themselves don't point in this direction and trivializing them and an accident of local but not worldwide significance suggest Earle is unsure what effect he is trying to achieve.  The Emcee portentously tells us that the motto of the evening is "Who do you think you are?"  but that question best applies to the Emcee himself not to the eight scenes or the inquest excerpts.

The evening is enjoyable because of the uniformly fine performances of the whole cast--Earle himself, the precocious Sam Earle (his son), Shari Hollett, Frank Moore, Mary Francis Moore and Robert Smith.  Especially noteworthy is Frank Moore's rendition of his own song "Toronto" (our own "New York, New York") as a lounge singer, Shari Hollett's mounting but suppressed anger as she recalls being dumped and Mary Francis Moore's portrait of a lonely wife and mother whose foster child she's never met is more real to her than anything in her life.  Chris Abraham's directs with such wit and sensitivity that again the Emcee's denigrating commentary seems even more out of place.

What will arrest everyone's attention on entering the theatre is John Thompson's amazingly realistic set.  One would think a real subway station had been dismantled and reassembled inside the auditorium.  It is so detailed and so carefully broken down with stains and discolorations in all the familiar places you initially can't believe your eyes.  The effect is enhanced by Andrea Lundy and Michelle Ramsay's accurate recreation of the exact lighting levels in a real TTC station.  Ingeniously Abraham directs the action so that more often than not the station represents other settings--a park or even a Mexican resort.  Richard Feren contributes the often menacing soundtrack.

As a play "Russell Hill" would be much stronger if Earle had not latched onto the 1995 accident to tie the show together.  Instead, he could have used the subway as a more general metaphor for people travelling in darkness, lonely individuals though surrounded by others.  He could have allowed the comedy and tragedy of his well-written scenes to speak for themselves instead of filtering them through a know-it-all cynicism.  As it is, the play is a rather odd ride since the conductor would rather slam the doors on your imagination instead of letting it out.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Scene from Russell Hill with Mary Francis Moore (foreground). ©2003 Tarragon Theatre..