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by Marius von Mayenburg, translated by Maja Zade, directed by Ashlie Corcoran

Theatre Smash, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

October 4-16, 2011

“Pretty Amazing”

You’d better rush out to give The Ugly One a good look.  It’s a brilliant comedy given a stunningly smart production by Theatre Smash.  It’s only an hour long, but playwright Marius von Mayenburg packs more mind-boggling twists and turns into that hour than you find in plays twice or three times as long.

The story concerns Lette (David Jansen), who has invented the “C2K connector”.  When his boss Scheffler (Hardee T. Lineham) decides to send Lette’s assistant Karlmann (Jesse Aaron Dwyre) to a trade fair to market the device, Lette is outraged until he finds out the reason.  Scheffler thinks that Lette’s face is “unacceptable” and will inhibit sales.  Abashed, lette goes home to his wife Fanny (Naomi Wright) only to discover that she, too, has always thought him “unspeakably ugly” although she knows he’s a beautiful person.  Lette seeks help from a plastic surgeon also called Scheffler (Hardee T. Lineham), who reconstructs Lette’s face from scratch.  The result is that Lette now has become incredibly handsome.  Sales of the C2K connector skyrocket and potential major clients, like a wealthy, decadent 73-year-old woman and plastic surgery addict, also called Fanny (Naomi Wright), predicate a deal on having sex with him.  So would her gay son, also called Karlmann (Jesse Aaron Dwyre), but mother’s needs come first.  Things soon get out of hand when Scheffler the doctor begins giving Lette’s new face to anyone who will pay for it. 

Not only is The Ugly One (Der Häßliche in the original German) a pitch-black but very funny satire on lookism but it also raises questions concerning the conscious and unconscious roles that image plays in society and the effects they have on identity.  Mayenburg goes further by imbedding this theme into the very structure of the play.  Each of the four actors plays at least two different characters who happen to have the same name.  David Jansen technically plays only the one character Lette, but Lette becomes such a different person after his surgery that he may as well have become a different character.  The question whether he is the same person he was now that he looks completely different is the main source of his anxiety. 

What really sets this play from 2007 apart is its innovative dramaturgy.  We’ve all seen plays where characters double roles and the two roles, whether in Shakespeare or Caryl Churchill, are distinguished by a change of costume, accent or both.  Here there is no change.  One scene instantaneously flips into the next sometimes with, sometimes without, a lighting cue to signal the change.  Lette’s argument with his boss suddenly flips into an argument with bis doctor.  Lette can be embracing Fanny the old woman suddenly to be embracing his own wife.  The technique takes doubling to its ultimate limit and the effect is dazzling.  Mayenburg’s writing is so clear as is Ashlie Corcoran’s direction and the cast’s amazingly precise performances that we are never in doubt about who is speaking to whom.  It is this technique plus the absence of scene changes that allows Mayenburg to put much material into so short a time.                 

Needless to say, there is no mask to convey Lette’s ugliness or beauty, merely the way that the other characters react to him.  Similarly, the situation and the manner of address distinguish the doctor from the boss, the wife from the wealthy client and the colleague from the son.  The dramaturgy thus poses the play’s central question of how much of our identity is determined internally and how much by the way others regard us.

Camellia Koo’s set consists of one large table with mirrors at each end.  This splits the audience into two sections facing each other, i.e. mirroring each other.  Jason Hand’s meticulous lighting is crucial in establishing changes of location.  Corcoran’s direction is impeccable.  Especially hilarious is the scene of Lette’s facial reconstruction staged using office supplies.  The cast work absolutely as a team but Jansen must be singled out for portraying so empathetically Lette’s journey from humiliation to overconfidence to existential doubt. 

In a plot with one jaw-dropping moment after the next, the conclusion is a real zinger.  If you have only on hour to spend in the theatre this year, spend it here.   

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (from top) Jesse Aaron Dwyre and David Jansen; Naomi Wright, Hardee Lineham and David Jansen. ©2011 James Heaslip.

For tickets, visit https://tickets.tarragontheatre.com.