>>REVIEW
PICKING UP CHEKHOV
Alberta Theatre Projects
playRites Festival
Written by Mansel Robinson
Runs until March 4
Martha Cohen Theatre
(Epcor Centre)
Nine years ago at playRites, Mansel Robinson knocked me for a loop. The Heart As It Lived, Robinson’s drama about the 1930s On-to-Ottawa Trek, took the bland Canadian Heritage Minute approach to our history and tossed it on its ear, bitterly questioning the selfish present’s betrayal of the idealistic past. It was a messy, angry play, but hugely vital and relevant.
So I came to Picking Up Chekhov, Robinson’s playRites encore, expecting the unexpected. And I certainly got it. The Saskatchewan playwright’s latest is a picaresque tragicomedy about a divorced two-bit private eye and his smart-ass teen-drama-queen daughter, whose fates collide on the road with an elderly hitchhiker named Chekhov and a runty white-trash kid armed with an assault rifle and formidable spelling abilities. Once again, Robinson has written a messy work but a vital one – full of holes but compelling nonetheless. It’s like some offbeat indie road movie that isn’t too sure where it’s going and runs out of gas near the end, but for most of the trip Robinson steers his story with crazy confidence, keeping us in suspense with a mystery plot and in stitches with his oddball characters and witty, acerbic dialogue.
Unlike The Heart As It Lived (and some of his other works), Robinson’s concerns here are less overtly political – or rather, his focus is on the personal politics of relationships, particularly between divorced parents and their offspring. When angry Mona (Natascha Girgis) takes legal steps to deny Sikorski (Trevor Leigh), her ex-husband, custody of their child, Stevie (Hilary Somerville), dad and daughter defy the law and hit the highway. In one of the play’s many quirks, it’s Stevie who wants them to go on the run – a budding actor, she must sense the road-movie potential – and she eggs on her loser father even while continually insulting him. Most of their adventure is told in retrospect, after something unspecified but terrible has happened to them, with Mona steadily piecing together the chain of events, aided by numerous witnesses along the way.
Mona is ostensibly the central figure, who, over the course of the play, has to make her own journey away from her unforgiving antagonism towards her ex. But she’s often eclipsed by the other characters, both major and minor. The most striking one is the precocious, outrageous, conniving Stevie, who talks circles round the sad-sack Sikorski as she lets her dramatic imagination run wild. Robinson’s kids aren’t sentimental – they tend to be lippy little shit-disturbers – and they often maintain an equal, if not superior, footing with his hapless adults. Sikorski, played to skuzzy perfection by Leigh, is a paunchy, irritable, slightly creepy middle-aged mediocrity with a weakness for women half his age, who seems to deserve the lack of respect shown him by Somerville’s sweetly smiling but cocky-as-hell teen. However, they have a bond that goes beyond blood – they need one another like Laurel needs Hardy; they’re a well-honed father-and-daughter act.
Things get confusing with the introduction of Chekhov – both the enigmatic old hitcher (a haunted-looking Tim Koetting) and the great Russian playwright. The first Chekhov leads them to his hometown, where, strangely, no one remembers him. The second makes his appearance via a book of his plays that Stevie steals, after which she begins learning the role of Ranyevskaia from The Cherry Orchard. It isn’t clear how Chekhov, poet of the ordinary, jibes with Robinson’s extraordinary characters and circumstances, and that’s not the only muddy thing here. The Kid (Caitlynne Medrek), a poor but plucky cracker and potential spelling-bee champ, turns out to be the one person who remembers Chekhov, the old man, and she’s out to settle a score with him on behalf of her grandfather. Her dispute seems to involve some stolen land, but Robinson leaves the details murky and you begin to suspect they’re only an excuse to concoct an absurd, violent climax that’s riddled with bullets and irony.
D.D. Kugler directs with such verve that you can almost overlook the play’s flaws. He coaxes spunky performances from youngsters Somerville and Medrek, and taps into the juicy comic resources of his adult cast, which also includes David Beazely, Kate Hennig, Duval Lang and Daniela Vlaskalic in multiple personae as the witnesses. (Vlaskalic and Lang, painting fast in broad strokes, are particularly funny.) Scott Reid’s skeletal set is hung with costumes and props, like tools on the walls of a garage, while David Fraser’s dappled lighting takes us outdoors and onstage musician-composer Celene Yohemas underscores the quirkiness with vibes.
Throughout the play, The Kid spells out words that act as signposts and commentary to the story – a device used with wry effectiveness by Robinson and Kugler. Like Stevie, this production is exuberantly theatrical, even in its darkest moments. And, although Robinson leaves threads dangling and dots unconnected, his final message of understanding and reconciliation comes poignantly seeping through. |
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