Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
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by Greg Nelson, directed by Jennifer Tarver
Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
March 26-April 27, 2008
In terms of genre Greg Nelson’s latest play The Fall may be a mystery, but the greatest mystery is why the Tarragon has wasted any time and effort on so flimsy a script. It is only 80 minutes long but, despite the best efforts of a fine cast and director, even at the halfway mark it has already become repetitive and unengaging.
In an anonymous meeting room in the Department of Justice in Ottawa, Kate (Sarah Dodd) insists on a seeing David McKay (Ashley Wright), the son of fictional Supreme Court Justice Harry McKay (also played by Wright), who supposedly drafted the most important sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Kate wants to tell David of the terrible secret that Jane, a Toronto Star reporter (also played by Dodd), discovered but never published. There’s no need to guess. Irony of ironies--Harry McKay and others violated the very rights and freedoms just as they were enshrining them in the Charter! The plot has too many holes to be credible. Nelson wants us to believe that a man who would go to criminal extremes to protect a secret would not only preserve rather than destroy all the evidence against him but then knowingly pass it all on to a newly hired assistant. The big secret seems cobbled together more from the plots of Hollywood movies than from reality. Indeed, the main flaw is that given the political decadence of the current age, including a U.S. Attorney General who believes in torture and a war waged on phoney evidence, reality trumps the most terrible secret Nelson can invent. Tension in The Fall does not mount but rather dissipates until it reaches a highly unsatisfactory ending that completely undercuts the high moral tone Nelson has tried to maintain.
Dodd is excellent in distinguishing Kate at two different ages from Jane, but Wright’s David blurs into his Harry. He does, however, have the bland officiousness of government leaders down pat. Nelson relies on both of Dodd’s characters stating so often that she has even worse news to impart that eventually we don’t care. Why should we when the real world daily provides more cause for outrage than Nelson’s fictional one.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-03-27.
Photo: Ashley Wright and Sarah Dodd.
2008-03-27
The Fall