Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
✭✭✭✭✩
written and directed by Michael Rubenfeld
Absit Omen Theatre/Buddies in Bad Times Theatre,
Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto
May 16-June 1, 2008
Michael Rubenfeld’s powerful, tightly written play My Fellow Creatures instantly draws the audience into the action intellectually and emotionally and holds it there through an intense 75 minutes. This is all the more remarkable since Rubenfeld encourages intellect and emotion to clash over the play’s incendiary subject matter of pedophilia.
The play concerns the meeting of two homosexual pedophiles in prison. Arthur (Terrence Bryant) has been inside for twelve years and has refused parole. Kelly (Benjamin Clost) has has just arrived having turned himself in to police and is filled with self-hatred for his crime. Arthur argues that his own love for a 10-year-old boy was consensual and is only a crime because of society’s narrow-mindedness. His attraction to the boy was part of his nature and the only place he can remain true to himself is not in the outside world but in prison where he continues to write unsent letters to the boy to ”keep faith.” The prison guard John (Richard Zeppieri), married with two children, represents the normative heterosexual world even though his marriage is falling apart. Recognizing that his humanizing of pedophiles will present a hurdle to many viewers, Rubenfeld draws us in dramatically with the mystery of Kelly’s increasingly aberrant and aggressive behaviour towards Arthur.
Bryant gives a masterfully layered performance, first presenting Arthur as a witty, seemingly harmless older man before revealing the underlying grit and emotion that keep him going. His final reaction to the truth of his life is absolutely chilling. Clost, too, is excellent, even in his mostly silent first scenes, in depicting a being outwardly tough but inwardly fragile and about to explode under the pressure of his conflicting emotions. Zeppieri serves mainly as a welcome foil for these two highly charged inmates, but despite his rigor conveys a great sympathy for the tragedy of their lives. Isolated on the white island of Robin Fisher’s set of Arthur’s cell, we the audience sit on two sides as if in judgement on what we see. It is no accident that Rubenfeld uses Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a touchstone. Through Rubenfeld’s insightful writing and direction, we leave keenly aware of the unbearable pain at the heart of two prisoners whom we earlier would have dismissed as monsters.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-05-19.
Photo: Terrence Bryant and Benjamin Clost. ©David Hawe.
2008-05-19
My Fellow Creatures