Review
THE OPTIMISTS
Theatre Junction
Starring Ryan Luhning, Adrienne Smook, Doug McKeag and Lindsay Burns
Written by Morwyn Brebner
Directed by Eda Holmes
Runs until February 28
Dr. Betty Mitchell Theatre (Jubilee Auditorium)
"Although we’re Canadian, let’s be optimistic," declares Chick the car salesman (Ryan Luhning) at the climax of Theatre Junction’s The Optimists, getting one of the biggest laughs in what is a very funny production.
Chick’s optimism isn’t the dunderheaded logic of Pangloss, Voltaire’s foolish philosopher who believed this was the best of all possible worlds. Rather, he’s a pragmatic optimist, who clings to hope like a stick in a maelstrom because it makes marginally more sense than giving up and drowning.
Morwyn Brebner’s sanguine new comedy is set in a Las Vegas hotel room, where Chick and his bride-to-be Teenie (Adrienne Smook) are preparing to take a shot at married bliss. The odds aren’t good. Chick’s past includes two ex-wives and at least double that many addictions. Sweet but simple Teenie is part bimbo, part religious flake. Their first date was at a Swiss Chalet. He proposed to her over the phone.
Chick’s best man and boyhood pal Doug (Doug McKeag), and his wife Margie (Lindsay Burns), appear to have it better. He’s an oncologist, she’s a psychiatrist, they’ve got a young daughter and enough money to jet to Vegas on a whim – which is what Margie has just done, arriving unexpectedly on the night before the nuptials and cranking up the already simmering tensions among the tiny wedding party. For it turns out Margie has a history with Chick and her marriage to Doug is in crisis.
It may sound like the tawdry setup for an Albee-style night of nastiness – especially given how much Scotch everyone is swilling – but Brebner has a strong sense of the surreal and ludicrous in people’s lives, and instead what we get is an often-hilarious evening of grungy absurdity mixed with compassion. Brebner seems to genuinely like all her characters and, no matter how ignorantly or selfishly they act, she gives them the benefit of the doubt – she’s an optimist herself.
Director Eda Holmes, her regular collaborator, gives this première staging a punchy Vegas vitality, its set (designed by Yannik Larivee) trimmed with marquee lights and its scenes framed by brash, jazzy bursts of noise from sound designer Peter Moller.
The acting is no less vibrant. Luhning’s paunchy, unshaven Chick bubbles with crude energy, although he doesn’t fully capture the character’s sleaziness and desperation. Smook, however, plays poor Teenie with a perfect deadpan sincerity. Burns is at her brittle best as Margie, who drips condescension but is, in her own way, just as loopy as Teenie. McKeag’s Doug wears the classic pained expression of the middle-class, middle-aged male, which could mean ulcers or adultery or, likely, both.
If there’s a fault here, it’s that Holmes and the actors’ upbeat approach shortchanges the play’s dark side, so that when Chick finally delivers his climactic plea for optimism in spite of all evidence to the contrary, it comes off more like a snappy salesman’s pitch than a cry from the heart. But to judge from the enthusiastic reception on opening night, Theatre Junction has another hit. |
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