FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| THEATRE Sage Theatre wanted to make a statement with the choice of their first play, and they've certainly done that. Sage is bold, controversial, socially responsible and unafraid to take risks - and Lion in the Streets says all of that. Unfortunately, it also says that they're a bit solemn and not afraid to be heavy-handed. Judith Thompson's play revolves around a nine-year-old Portuguese girl named Isobel (a wonderfully quirky Esther Purves-Smith), lost and wandering through city streets searching for her home. Eventually, Isobel comes to discover that she is in fact dead, and drifts through the city in hopes of confronting her murderer. In the process, she finds herself a voyeur in the lives of her neighbors, bearing witness to their own troubled lives and warning them of encroaching evil. While the play purports to be about Isobel's search, it's really nothing more than a device to allow the playwright to address a shopping list of social ills. The vignettes that Isobel silently observes touch on everything from racism to domestic abuse to the marginalization of the disabled - each in its turn carefully, even poetically, condemned and consigned to the wings. Isobel eventually encounters her "lion," but by the time that happens, the murder of a young girl seems like just another unfortunate symptom of the modern malaise. The performances here are almost uniformly excellent, however, with all of the actors, apart from Purves-Smith, playing multiple roles. Each actor has a dud or two in their repertoire - an over-the-top rampage or a flat, uninspired portrayal. But each one scores big at least once, creating in a few broad strokes a complex, exciting character that transcends the playwright's heavy touch. Douglas MacLeod's tortured Father Hayes and Darcy Dunlop's dying cancer victim, who longs for an Ophelia-like death, are two of the best, but Susan Bristow also creates a stable of strikingly unique characters, encompassing a worried mother and a shattered rape victim. Marianne Copithorne's Rhonda is a plain-speaking delight, and Trevor Leigh perfectly embodies fearful hostility in a number of roles. There is certainly a place for overtly socially active theatre in Calgary, and Sage's program/ newsletter, which, for this production includes a social worker's perspective on violence and power issues, is a unique twist. On stage, however, you need a compelling story and a sympathetic (rather than simply pathetic) character or two in order to qualify as good theatre. Lion in the Streets doesn't do the job. |