Reviews 2016
Reviews 2016
✭✭✭✭✩
by Caryl Churchill, directed by Megan Watson
PreShow Playlist, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto Fringe Festival, Toronto
June 29-July 9, 2016;
Best of Fringe, Toronto Centre for the Arts, Toronto
July 20, 26 & 27, 2016
In only 45 minutes and three short acts this amazing dystopian fantasy depicts the complete destruction of all social and natural systems. In Act 1 world disintegration begins with lies an aunt (Alix Sideris) tells her young niece (Michela Cannon) to cover up the torture and death her uncle is inflicting upon a vanload of “traitors”. In Act 2 which takes place 15 years later, two hatters (Watson as the grown-up niece and Michael Ayres) ply their trade to deck the people whom the government parades to their deaths in fancy hats. The two hatters have become so dissociated from the gruesome purpose their hats are used for that they focus entirely on their own working conditions and on their creativity they express in their job. By the time of Act 3, all animate and inanimate nature is at war. Churchill allows us to think that either the comic alliances of nations with professions and animals is purely surreal and metaphorical or that the mounting paranoia of the aunt, the niece and the hatter has driven them mad.
Director Megan Watson enhances Churchill’s deepening nightmare with Patricia Allison’s choreography, performed with impeccable precision by the three-member cast. Sadly, Watson provides no vision of the parade of hats, the play’s central and most disturbing image. Churchill’s notes suggest that the scene should use at least twenty people. To avoid such expense, Watson might have used a projection loop of shadows of people passing by.
Those familiar with a Churchill play like The Skriker (1994) will see how this play from 2000 develops similar apocalyptic themes. Others may find it a complete puzzle. Yet so relevant is the play to the political and ecological events of today that it is a challenge well worth confronting.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is based on my review for NOW magazine from 2016-07-02.
Photo: Michela Cannon and Michael Ayres. ©2016 Eva Barrie.
For tickets, visit http://fringetoronto.com or www.tocentre.com/whats-on.
2016-07-02
Far Away