Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✩✩
created and directed by Morris Panych & Wendy Gorling
CanStage/Citadel Theatre/Theatre Calgary,
Bluma Appel Theatre, Toronto
February 15-March 10, 2007
The Overcoat has not worn well. Created and directed by Morris Panych and Wendy Gorling in 1997, this full-length telling in mime of Nikolai Gogol’s famous tale seems even more superficial on second viewing than it did when last seen here in 2000. The show’s hype would have you think that telling a story with performers moving in time to music is somehow unique, when, in fact, performers in ballet and musicals do it all the time. As it is, The Overcoat is neither as involving as the best spoken theatre nor as invigorating as the best dance pieces.
It might be some compensation if the story were told well, but Panych and Gorling spend more time on incidentals like the manufacture of the overcoat than on exploring the psyche of The Man (Peter Anderson), who orders it hoping that changing his appearance will change his life. The acting style parodies the exaggerated gestures of silent movies (think Keystone Kops not Pabst or Dreyer). Though Anderson is wonderfully adept as a mime, his pathos never draws us in as Chaplin’s does on film.
Where The Overcoat succeeds is as sheer spectacle. Ken MacDonald’s Metropolis-like sets and Alan Brodie’s expressionist lighting are superb. If only there were more scenes like The Man’s joyful dance with his animated coat, this spectacle might not seem quite so empty.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-02-22.
Photo: Peter Anderson and Colin Heath.
2007-02-22
The Overcoat