✭✭✭✩✩

written and directed by Morris Panych

CanStage, Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto

October 21-November 13, 2004

The line-up for CanStage’s current production of Morris Panych’s 1995 black comedy Vigil would seem to be ideal--Panych as director, his partner Ken MacDonald as designer and starring celebrated actors Brent Carver and Martha Henry.  The perplexing question is why this combination has produced such pallid results on stage.

Much of the problem, strange to say, has to do with Carver and Henry.  Both actors are renowned for creating strong emotional bonds with an audience through highly nuanced, naturalistic performances.  This is, however, precisely the opposite of what is required in a strongly satirical, nearly absurdist play like Vigil.  Kemp (Carver), a former bank employee, has travelled across the country to be with his dying aunt Grace (Henry), whom he has not seen for 30 years.  The longer Grace stays alive, the more anxious Kemp is for her to die. 

MacDonald’s grungy expressionist set makes physical the skewed reality of Panych’s text, itself a tour-de-force of cynicism as Kemp badgers the nearly silent Grace into giving up life since, as his own bizarre experience has shown, it is not worth living.  His  impatience culminates in building a Rube Goldberg type of suicide device for Grace.  Carver, however, neutralizes the text’s vitriol in trying to make Kemp a sensitive if disturbed young man.  This ignores the tone and much of the substance of the text.  If Kemp is as effeminate and angry as his past suggests, why does Carver show no evidence of it?  Grace should be a bland, kindly woman who suffers Kemp’s insults and self-absorption in enigmatic silence, but Henry animates her too much right from the beginning.  Did Panych deliberately soften his play for the CanStage mainstage audience or was he too in awe of Carver and Henry to impose his dark vision on them?  Whatever the reason, this biting comedy has been defanged.                     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2004-10-28.

Photo: Brent Carver as Kemp. ©2004 Lucas Oleniuk.