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Hannah Moscovitch, directed by Michael Rubenfeld /Natasha Myntowych

Factory Theatre, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

January 19-February 17, 2008

Factory Theatre has combined Hannah Moscovitch’s two acclaimed one-act plays into a double bill.  Both were hits at the Rhubarb! Festival and at SummerWorks, Essay in 2005 and The Russian Play in 2006.  Seen in order of writing the plays show a quantum leap in dramatic imagination from the good but rather obvious Essay to the complex contrasts of tone in The Russian Play.

Essay seems like a student play in more ways than one.  In terms of story, it is about a female first-year student Pixie (Claire Jenkins) discussing the female-centred topic for her essay with her “History of War” TA Jeffrey (Jordan Pettle).  In terms of attitude it has not brushed away the naïve notion that academics’ pursuits and behaviour are of the utmost importance.  To the outsider the play is a neat little satire on the burden gender politics has placed on course subject matter and on student-teacher relations in university.  The carefully politically correct Jeffrey comes into conflict with his patronizing professor (Richard Greenblatt) both over Pixie’s essay and over the general role of women in history only to find men’s exclusion of women in assessing history to repeat itself in miniature in his office.  All three parts are well cast and well played, with Greenblatt especially good at exuding self-satisfied pity that neither Jeffrey nor Pixie has a clue how to the play power games so vital in academia.

The Russian Play presents itself at first as a satire of Russian stories--“laughter followed by misery” according the comically cynical Narrator (Michelle Monteith).  Moscovitch’s daring experiment is, in fact, to intersperse the Narrator’s acerbic commentary with the touching, sensitively played scenes of her tale of the doomed love affair of a flower girl Aebovka (also Monteith) with the gravedigger Piotr (Aaron Willis).  We both laugh at the truth of the Narrator’s remarks about Russians and their vodka-sodden themes and are still drawn in to the story she mocks.  It is a fine achievement until it culminates in a trick ending that makes no sense of the central character.  What really sells the play is the extraordinary performance of Monteith as both cynic and innocent.  Beauty in song and dance adds to her accomplishment.  Willis and Shawn Campbell as factory owner both give fine, understated performances.  One can understand why Factory would have each play presented by people originally associated with it, but since each has the same cast requirements--one young male and female plus one older male--it would be theatrically more exciting to have the same three actors perform both plays.  While it seems the two plays may have been over-praised at the time, they are never less than entertaining and, in the case of The Russian Play, even moving.               

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-01-24.

Photo: Claire Jenkins and Richard Greenblatt / Michelle Monteith and Shawn Campbell.