Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
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by Sam Shepard, directed by Kat Sandler
Theatre Brouhaha, The Playwright Project, Various venues, Toronto
May 1-7, 2013
Blue: “Everything moves like a fever.”
Toronto has a new theatre festival – The Playwright Project. Seven theatre companies come together to stage seven one-act plays by a featured playwright in seven different Toronto neighbourhoods. Every night for a week, each production rotates to a different neighbourhood, bringing a festival of the chosen playwright’s work to audiences in each location. In its inaugural year last year the playwright chosen was Tennessee Williams. This year it is Sam Shepard. Thus, on May 1 seven different one-act plays by Shepard all opened simultaneously in seven different venues. I caught Theatre Brouhaha’s production of The Unseen Hand at the Cameron House.
Written in 1969, The Unseen Hand is one of Shepard’s early surrealistic plays. After all, it does involve a 120-year-old man, two resurrected 19th-century cowboys, an alien and a male cheerleader. It’s very funny and you can enjoy it for the sheer wackiness of the characters and situations. Nevertheless, beneath all the craziness lie some of the clearest statements of themes that Shepard would later explore in all his more “serious” plays.
The action begins with the ancient cowboy Blue Morphan (Scott Clarkson) talking to the imaginary driver of the 1951 Chevy he has been living in for the last twenty years near a highway in Azusa, California. To him the world has changed so much that he’s glad to be at the end of his life’s journey. For students of Shepard Blue’s monologue is useful for stating outright so many of the themes that inform the author’s work. Blue complains: “Used to be, a man would have hisself a misunderstanding and go out and settle it with a six gun. Now it’s all silent, secret. Everything moves like a fever. Don’t know when they’ll cut ya’ down and when they do ya’ don’t know who done it”. You really couldn’t have a better lament for the individualism of the Old West symbolized by the gun combined with paranoia of government power”. This might have been written in 1969 but sentiment’s like Blue’s are still very much alive today.
Interrupting Blue’s meditations is the arrival of an alien being named Willie (Kevin Ritchie). Designer Cat Haywood has wisely not followed Shepard’s directions for “super future clothes” but instead has Ritchie shirtless and barefoot with only a pauldron for armour held with a diagonal strap. This design has the great advantage of putting us in the same position as Willie in thinking that Willie may be an escapee of a mental health facility. Willie has a fantastic tale to tell of how his people, bred from mandrills to become human, have been enslaved by the Sorcerers of the High Commission on Nogo to work in their diamond mines. He has escaped and seeks the help of famous Morphan brothers to free his people. Blue is perplexed for many reasons. One is that his two brother were gunned down in the 19th century, and two, Willie’s explanation is constantly interrupted with acute spasms of pain inflicted by “the unseen hand”, the method of mind control the sorcerers have developed to subject his race wherever they are. When Willie starts to think too far outside a restricted sphere, the “hand” is activated and crushes his brain back to size.
As it happens, the death of Blue’s brother is no problem for Willie who can resurrect the dead. In due course both Cisco (Rick Jon Egan) and Sycamore (Tom Darcy McGee) appear and begin to dream of continuing the exploits of Morphan brothers in holding up banks and trains (although there no trains anymore). First they have to deal with the odd threat posed by The Kid (G. Kyle Shields). He is a male cheerleader an Azusa high school who has just been humiliated in various ways by players from the other team. When we first meet him he seems as alien as the alien, rambling on at top speed about the vengeance we wants against his attackers. The second time we see him the Morphan brothers are worried that he has overheard the plans, upon which The Kid launches into a rabid defence of everything American (Azusa’s motto is “A to Z in the USA”) including Mom and apple pie.
I won’t reveal how the ending occurs except to say that the Morphan brothers are rendered utterly useless and the hyper-patriotic Kid neutralized. In a manner much more obvious than in his later plays, Shepard thus shows the defeat of American dreams of returning to past glory and the fatuousness of American triumphalism. It a rare play that combines so much hilarity and food for thought in one compact hour.
Kat Sandler has directed the play as if it were improv sketch comedy. This means the acting style is not refined but hugely enjoyable and it really captures the sense of spontaneity in Shepard’s script as he sets down one flight of fancy after the next. Of the three Morphan brothers, Egan is the one with the perfect Western accent and the ideal deadpan manner. Clarkson relies far too much on a collection of tics to make Blue seem aged and McGee seems to come more from the South than the West. Kevin Ritchie gives a terrific performance as Willie. He is a very physical actor as is manifest in the wild thrashing and contortions of pain he depicts when subject to the unseen hand. At the same time he is adept at reeling off extraordinarily difficult speeches crammed with a near-nonsensical amount of sci-fi jargon. As “The Kid”, Shield does not have to engage in so much physicality, but he does deliver his character’s long central monologue about the sanctity of all the Azusa stands for with fervour and panache. Alexis Budd provides live music before the show and clever live sound effects during the action.
I went to The Unseen Hand because it was playing at the theatre nearest me, but then that is the whole purpose of The Playwright Project – to bring theatre to the people. The other plays in the festival this year are: Fool for Love (1983), Cowboy Mouth (1971), Saving Fats (2013), When the World Was Green (1996), Geography of a Horse Dreamer (1974) and Angel City (1976). Besides the Cameron House in Queen West, there are venues in Leslieville, the Danforth, the Beach, Little Portugal, the Junction and Bloorcourt Village. Consult the website http://playwrightproject.com for places and times. The Playwrights Project is a great new addition to the theatre scene in Toronto and you owe it to yourself to take advantage of the pleasures and insights it offers.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Kevin Ritchie, Tom Darcy McGee, Scott Clarkson, Rick Jon Egan and G. Kyle Shields. ©2013 Theatre Brouhaha.
For tickets, visit http://playwrightproject.com.
2013-05-02
The Unseen Hand