✭✭✭✩✩

by Sergi Belbel, translated by John London,

directed by Victor Correia

Concentrate in Time Theatre, Winchester Street Theatre, Toronto

October 1-19, 2008

Caresses by Catalan playwright Sergi Belbel is the inaugural production of Concentrate in Time Theatre (CITT).  Toronto last saw this play in an Equity Showcase production in 2000.  If you missed it then, do try to see it now because it is one of the greatest plays of the last decade as the fine CITT makes abundantly clear.  

For Caresses (1991) Belbel borrows the structure of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde (1897) that consists of a series of ten duologues (A+B, B+C, C+D, etc.).  Belbel adds an eleventh (K+A) to round off the series.  Schnitzler created a scandal since each scene climaxed in (implied) sex between the two speakers, his point being that sex, like death, is the great leveller of class distinctions.  Belbel’s play is more disturbing.  His characters, too, long for love or at least sense of connection.  Yet they are all victims so humiliated by their victimhood that they lash out against those nearest them who could provide solace.  Unlike Schnitzler, only one scene ends in a sex act.  The rest climax in chilly silence or verbal and physical abuse.  In the first scene we meet an ordinary husband and wife (Adrian Proszowski and Amanda Barker) who have reached that point in marriage where they think they have nothing more to say to each other.  In frustration the husband repeatedly slaps his wife, but she, filled with hatred not only against him but against her unloving mother (Anita Deyonge), deals him a far more savage beating.

With one or two exceptions, these are the play’s “caresses,” as director Victor Correia brings out with such clarity, where characters’ longing for connection is struck down with hatred or indifference.  To work best, no actors should be double cast and the age difference between actors should be obvious since so many scenes take place between parents and children.  The age-range and size of Correia’s cast does not allow this, so sometimes confusion arises as to what exactly the relation is between the characters in each scene.  In general, the sex and violence in the play is too muted.  Since Belbel clearly sets out to disturb, Correia could ramp up the psychological aggression in each encounter because the underlying pain that motivates it is so palpable.  CITT means to showcase new acting talent and you will certainly leave impressed both by the play itself and by the strong performances of the entire nine-person cast.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-10-06.

Photo: Cast member of Caresses.