>>REVIEW
THE DAZZLE
Runs until December 2
Sage Theatre
Pumphouse Theatres
By the end of their lives, Homer and Langley Collyer had entombed themselves in over 100 tons of detritus – garbage culled from the disintegrating Harlem neighbourhood around them. In The Dazzle, playwright Richard Greenberg imagines being able to cut through their social and literal insularity, bringing audiences into the Collyer brothers’ increasingly claustrophobic drawing room to observe their slow decline.
With their last production, Sage Theatre brought heroin addiction and the cycle of working-class poverty to the Joyce Doolittle with Trainspotting. In The Dazzle, they have staged a work that is no less striking, no less difficult and just as artfully produced.
There is a sweeping, staccato rhythm to Greenberg’s dialogue, a series of broken tangents and desperate pleas whose resemblance to the lighter repartee of drawing room comedy has been called "drawing room tragedy." While Langley Collyer (Frank Zotter) is ostensibly a pianist, his obsession with the sensual, nonlinear world utterly divorces his thoughts and actions from reality, or at least any reality that can be followed. Increasingly unable to live in a world whose basic logistics bore him – earning a living, forming relationships – his descent into a hoarding recluse seems to be a natural progression. Objects thrown through their windows, Homer (Duval Lang) slumped mirthlessly in his chair amid the growing squalor, Langley gleefully exclaims: "I love our life."
Playing enabler to Langley’s escalating eccentricities ("I am my brother’s… accountant," he explains), Homer lives in virtual servitude to his brother, struggling to control him before following him inevitably into collapse. The introduction of Milly (Chantal Perron) sees Homer first lashing out with unveiled hostility when he perceives her as a threat, then attempting to bring her into the fold once he realizes her money could afford Langley the security he needs.
Though he pines for a life of his own, even fabricating a love affair, Homer cannot let go of his brother, and so the two of them take their fall together.
Despite the deceptively frivolous language of Langley’s ephemeral thoughts and Homer’s acid bon mots, The Dazzle is an arresting play of surprising depth. All three characters possess a ragged humanity, desperate in their own ways for companionship. Homer and Milly are both drawn to Langley – Homer as saviour and Milly as the one in need of saving – while Langley, though largely oblivious to it, is utterly dependent on Homer.
Accented by Terry Gunvordahl’s abrasive lighting design, the Collyer brothers’ devolution from bourgeoisie to virtual squatters in their own home is a shocking transformation. Gunvordahl’s constricting set, a series of movable shelves spray painted a uniform matte grey, is a perfect complement to the increasingly tense clutter of Greenberg’s text, which Sage’s uniformly excellent cast navigates with remarkable agility.
Lang, the world-weary protector whose own desperation is never far from the surface; Perron, the reckless debutante trying to find rebellion in Langley’s "artistic" eccentricity; and Zotter, a wide-eyed man-child who lives perpetually in an altered state. Together, they bring such compelling humanity to Greenberg’s work that even the surreal nature of their characters’ lives cannot make their fall anything but tragic.
On the heels of his visceral performance as Trainspotting’s lead, director Geoffrey Ewart has presented a work of shocking intimacy. Despite the speculative nature of Greenberg’s work, it is essentially an archaeological dig, unearthing the story of two men from 136 tonnes of garbage. Its characters more than surreal caricatures, The Dazzle seamlessly blends the bizarre and human into an arresting portrait of desperation and co-dependency. |
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