Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✩✩✩
by Michael Healey, directed by Christopher Newton
Mirvish Productions/Manitoba Theatre Centre,
Royal Alexandra Theatre, Toronto
April 23, 2006
The Innocent Eye Test is the name of a clever, playful 1981 painting by American Mark Tansey showing a cow gazing at a classic Dutch painting of a cow. Michael Healey of Drawer Boy fame has borrowed the title for his latest play which features Tansey’s painting but whose belaboured zaniness reflects none of the painting’s subtlety or wit.
The play concerns the mild-mannered Samuel Kneck (Kevin Bundy), who is caught in a mix-up between a Ukrainian arms dealer (Gord Rand), an Irish terrorist (Tanja Jacobs) and Las Vegas casino owner Darryl (Tom McCamus), who wants to buy Tansey’s painting. One could become engaged by the play if the story made an iota of sense, but the plot holes are big enough for entire herds of cattle to roam through. The story is artificially spun out by having Darryl needlessly hold back on buying something he essentially owns and by not having the vacationing clairvoyant Moui (Lisa Norton) speak out earlier.
The show is billed as “an old-fashioned farce”, but good farces operate on strictly mechanical principles of cause-and-effect that Healey simply ignores. He hasn’t even found a satisfactory way to end it. It is watchable only because the cast in absolutely top form with Bundy truly hilarious as a terminally apologetic Canadian.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-03-23.
Photo: Kevin Bundy and C. David Johnson. Below: The Innocent Eye Test, Mark Tansey, 1981
2006-03-23
The Innocent Eye Test