Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✩✩✩
by Rosa Laborde, directed by Richard Rose
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
February 14-March 19, 2006
Usually “brief” and “tedious” are opposites. That’s not the case with Rosa Laborde’s 65-minute play Léo now receiving its world premiere at the Tarragon Theatre. Despite the slick direction of Richard Rose and handsome design of Graeme S. Thomson, the show feels like an incomplete outline of a play, not a finished work.
Laborde follows three Chilean friends--the poet Léo (Salvatore Antonio), the politician Rodrigo (Sergio Di Zio) and the kleptomaniac Isolda (Cara Pifko)--from childhood to university in the 1970s as all three become romantically involved. They witness both the election of socialist president Salvador Allende and the US-backed coup that ousted him, but Laborde draws no connection between the characters’ personal relationships and Chilean politics except that the coup brings both to an end. Laborde provides so little background information it’s hard to care about either the characters or the country’s history. Besides, the characters’ clichéd speech and stilted excursions into beginner’s philosophy or rudimentary political science do nothing to clarify their motives.
The cast does a heroic job of trying to give this trifle emotional impact. Antonio alone has a smouldering presence that characterizes Léo better than anything he says, just as Marcelo Puente’s fiery guitar accompaniment creates more atmosphere than anything Laborde can conjure up.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-02-23.
Photo: Cara Pifko, Sergio Di Zio and Salvatore Antonio. ©Cylla von Tiedemann.
2006-02-23
Léo