FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1997. All Rights Reserved.


Leaping from the ivory tower
Prof takes a break from the academy to turn classic anti-hero upside down
By Lori Montgomery

The Philanthropist
by Christopher Hampton, starring Brian Smith
Theatre Junction
March 19 ­ April 5

In one incarnation, Brian Smith is the head of the drama department at the University of Calgary, making the tough decisions and leading the department through difficult times. In his other life, though, he treads the boards alongside his students as an actor in Theatre Junction's The Philanthropist.

"For me, this is performance research, but I have to rehearse at night," Smith says during a break in rehearsal. "During this rehearsal period, it's like working two jobs, but I believe it's important for us in the university to remain connected as much as we can with the profession... we can't afford to escape into a cocoon."

You might think that the young people who normally populate the stage at Theatre Junction, many of them former students of Smith's, might feel a bit intimidated by sharing the stage with their teacher. Not so, says the soft-spoken Smith.

"It feels a bit like family," he says. "Mark (Lawes, TJ artistic director) was a student of mine when I first came here 10 years ago." Smith says that he enjoys the switch from teacher to colleague. "The tables are turned and you are put in the position of having the opportunity to learn from people you once taught."

He laughs at the idea that the young people might be intimidated by him.

"In fact, if anyone feels intimidated, probably I do," he says, "because I don't get to act that often, and each time I do, I have to re-polish my instrument - it's a big challenge for me."

Dragged away from his lunch to give this interview, Smith downs a drinkin' box of juice as he reflects on the play itself, inspired by Molière's The Misanthrope. In place of Alceste, to whom "all men are odious," Smith plays Phillip, an intellectual who loves all mankind uncritically. As Molière says, though, "preference must be based on esteem, and to esteem everyone is to esteem no one." Phillip espouses every cause and is unable to commit to any one.

"What we discover in the play is that inside (Phillip), maybe there's a misanthrope that begins to work its way out a little bit," Smith says. "Phillip plays out philanthropy to a sort of ridiculous degree."

Like Molière, though less harshly critical, playwright Christopher Hampton allows his characters to stand in for larger societal types.

"Hampton seems to have wanted to connect the uncertainty of the characters in the play with a more general political uncertainty," Smith says, "and to connect some of the cynicism that some of the characters mutter with a more general cynicism and skepticism in the political world."

Philanthropy is a kind of mask that Phillip wears, Smith says, a "life lie" that doesn't help him or anyone else in his life. Eventually, Phillip begins to realize this.

"And so, in the end, his dilemma about how to live and who to live with hasn't been resolved completely," Smith explains, "but perhaps in the end you see him taking the first step along a path that will be a more truthful one."

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