Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
✭✭✭✭✩
by David Castro, directed by Dennis Neal
Pachyderm Productions, Toronto Fringe Festival, Tarragon Theatre ExtraSpace, Toronto
July 3-11, 2015
“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” (Genesis I:26)
Man’s Dominion is a powerful, thought-provoking solo show about a bizarre and shameful incident in American history. On September 13, 1916, the people of Erwin, Tennessee lynched Mary the elephant, the 18-year-old star attraction of Sparks Circus, for killing her new assistant trainer Red Eldridge. She was sentenced to death by hanging from the crane of a railroad derrick car, the only structure with sufficient height and strength suitable for her execution. For playwright David Castro this strange incident serves as focal point for themes, both American and universal, that still resonate today. Actor Tim Powell masterfully plays ten characters connected to Mary whose conflicting viewpoints animate the story and help explain how society could ever have sanctioned such cruelty.
The play begins with three spotlights on the stage suggesting a traditional three-ring circus where Mary the elephant was the main attraction. In the centre ring is the Ringmaster who introduces the story. In the light on stage right is a bullhook, a short wood pole fitted with a metal hook and topped with a spearhead used as an elephant goad. In the light on stage left is a length of chain fixed to the floor. The stage image tells us that this is the life Mary knew, her movement restricted when not needed, painfully prodded when meant to move.
Mary murdered the untrained Red Eldridge on only his second day of work. He prodded her with a goad precisely at the point, as it turned out, where she had an abscessed tooth. Mary picked him up and hurled him into some booths and then crushed his head with her foot.
Of the nine other characters, all speaking after death as ghosts conjured by the Ringmaster, only two support the decision to have Mary executed. The first is the owner of circus Charlie Sparks, who despite his love for Mary sees that her killing of Eldridge was clearly intentional. The townsfolk immediately called for her death after the incident and Charlie has to overcome his sympathy for Mary to see that purely in business terms people will not pay to see an animal they know has killed a man.
The most fervent supporter of executing Mary is the Reverend George McKee. He is the one who cites Genesis 1:26, the verse that gives the play its title, in which God gives man dominion over the entire animal kingdom - a verse still used by fundamentalist Christians opposed to ecology or animal preservation. He believes in the Old Testament god of vengeance and thinks that man has the right to enact that vengeance. As usual with this type of rhetoric we wonder why this self-professed Christian prefers the Old Testament god to the New Testament god of mercy which, theoretically, is what should make him a Christian.
Those who oppose killing Mary include the murdered man himself and the circus’s Jimmy Durante-like clown, the only comic character in the play, whose cynical view is all-encompassing. Three characters bring unusual perspectives to the incident. A hunter asked to shoot Mary refuses because shooting a chained animal goes contrary to the sport of hunting. A military man, who lost a son in the Civil War, knows the bravery of cavalry horses in battle and is outraged that men should feel it right to destroy such an intelligent animal. An African-American worker at the railroad in Erwin is told that “one of his kind” is arriving to be hanged. He is expecting that it will be another black man, but instead it is Mary, who is in fact an Asian elephant. The worker sees Mary’s death as just another lynching and notes that Mary’s death was relatively peaceful since, unlike black men who are lynched, she was not tortured or mutilated before death.
Tim Powell gives a superb performance, easily sliding from one character to the next using tone of voice, accent and posture to keep them all distinct. His acting is so clear that he has no need of the background music or lighting changes that director Dennis Neal too often uses to underscore certain characters.
What emerges from these interwoven monologues is a portrait of white Americans, comfortable with something other – whether an elephant or black person – only if that other is denied any freedom to act or retaliate. While white vigilantism is praised, the notion that an abused animal (or abused human being) would turn on her abuser is viewed with horror. Meantime, the forces of business and religion find that execution rather than compassion is in their common interest. Castro’s play demonstrates that what at first seems like a freakish event from the past embodies modes of thought still disturbingly prevalent in the present.
The producers of Man’s Dominion are fully aware of the danger that this notion of human privilege without responsibility has caused, not just in the death on Mary in 1916 but in the continuing slaughter of elephants today. They therefore urge people to sign up for the International March for Elephants in Toronto at www.facebook.com/MarchForElephantsToronto.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Tim Powell as five of the ten characters in Man’s Dominion. ©2015 Henning Fischer Photography.
2015-07-04
Man's Dominion