Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✩✩
by Maev Beaty and Erin Shields,
directed by Andrea Donaldson
Groundwater Productions, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto
March 22-April 2, 2011
A hit at SummerWorks 2010, Montparnasse returns for a full run. Maev Beaty and Erin Shields’s heady tale of models and artists in 1920s Paris takes as many turns as the winding streets of what was the artistic heart of the city before it arrives at what ought to have been its focus from the start--namely, the question of what claim the artist’s model can make to having created the work of art that features her.
Montparnasse starts out as a comedy with a nude Margaret (Shields) enumerating what she has learned in Paris while her Canadian friend Amelia (Beaty) describes her rough passage across the water and difficulty in finding Margaret. Comedy alternates with drama as Amelia loses hope of ever painting while Margaret slides downhill, addicted to the debauched lifestyle of the artists around her. The play unfortunately settles on melodrama for its final mode with Amelia on the verge of success and Margaret of despair. Plot-heavy for its 75-minute length, Margaret and Amelia must narrate their actions to move from scene to scene as much as play out the dramatic scenes themselves.
The play works as well as it does due to the fine acting of Shields and Beaty and the firm direction of Andrea Donaldson in negotiating the many changes of mood. Shields suggests fragility beneath Margaret’s cultivated devil-may-care persona, while Beaty demonstrates her flair for comedy when Amelia starts out as a hick in the big city and her depth in drama when Amelia has her first affair. The two also play numerous other roles as broad caricatures, except for Shields as timid bookstore-owner Sylvia Beech. Humorous at the time is Beaty as the lascivious painter Jules Pascin and Shields as the despotic artist Fernand Léger.
The play concludes in full earnestness as Beaty enumerates the deaths of Parisian models of the time. They are anonymous in the paintings that gave their painters fame. This is supposed to be a sign of male exploitation of women, except that the play has only ridiculed male painters and its action has clearly shown that Amelia’s lack of success is due not to men but to lack of inspiration and Margaret’s jealousy. Despite these complications, Montparnasse does conjure up the excitement of Paris in the 1920s as a crucible of new ideas in art, philosophy and behaviour where it is as easy to find light as to get burnt.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2011-03-24.
Photo: Erin Shields and Maev Beaty. ©Aviva Armour Ostroff.
2011-03-24
Montparnasse