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by George F. Walker, directed by Michael Murphy

Staged & Confused, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

July 19-29, 2007

Here’s a new idea--presenting a musical with all the dialogue but without the songs.  That is what we get in Staged and Confused’s production of George F. Walker’s Rumours of Our Death.  When the work first appeared in 1980 it was a musical with music by John Roby and lyrics by Walker and Roby.  According to the company, Walker himself updated and revised the show for the present production.  If so, he has to be held responsible for the fairly dismal state of the script.  That it is not a total failure is entirely due to the efforts of the bright young company that Staged & Confused is.

 

It’s easy to see why the company would choose this early work.  This is its first revival since its premiere, it features a King (Scott Clarkson), here restyled as a president, who wants to go to war, it has terrorists who kidnap the King’s daughter (Emily Hincks) and then, of course, it has zombies, who have have lately become the monster du jour.  Nevertheless, the play has much more to do with the Patty Hearst case of the 1970s than with war, since a running joke is the war’s continual postponement.  Instead, the play is a parable with the simple moral that anyone who does not oppose a corrupt system might as well be one of the living dead.

 

Instead of the show’s original music, director Michael Murphy has chosen a large number of pop songs from the 1960s to cover the innumerable scene changes.  Why he chose the 1960s when the show is from 1980 and updated to the present is a mystery.  Also a mystery is why in a play consisting of so many miniscule scenes, the scene changes are so laborious.  It would have been simpler to divide the stage into at least two playing areas and signal changes with lighting rather than having the cast continually on lug, assemble and lug off furniture and props.  Indeed, some scene setups are longer than the scenes themselves.

 

Relevant or not, this is not top-drawer Walker.  The dialogue is only fitfully funny and the scene endings are more often lame than punchy.  What keeps the show afloat are the performances of the talented cast.  Clarkson is very funny as the King/President, though he much more a younger Nixon than the present Bush.  Megan Deeks is hilarious as the visionary Queen, particularly during her binge-eating scenes.  Other standouts are Graham Hood as a real nebbish of a writer, Ted Neal as a farmer’s son dedicated to self-improvement and Hincks as the Valley Girlish kidnappee.  At the end of the show’s 75 minutes, one only wished that the company had chosen to revive a stronger play.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-07-24.

Photo: Scott Clarkson as the King.