>>REVIEW
THE CRIPPLE OF INISHMAAN
Runs until March 25
Theatre Calgary
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Doddering. Feeble. Slow. It’s a shame that a production named The Cripple of Inishmaan lends itself so easily to turns of phrase so obvious. In fairness, however, there’s nothing exceptional about Theatre Calgary’s latest production, either – and that’s the problem.
From Irish playwright and theatrical goldenboy Martin McDonagh, The Cripple of Inishmaan is a familiar "small town boy seeks better life" story twisted with McDonagh’s lauded sense of dark humour. Full of mean-spirited small town folks driven by personal pettiness and pride, Inishmaan is exactly the kind of place from which a young man like the island’s titular cripple, Billy (Christian Goutsis), yearns to run away. From the rumour-mongering johnnypateenmike (Rod Beattie) to the island’s violence-prone Helen (Daniela Vlaskalic), and even his own surrogate aunts (played by Mary Hennigan and Patricia Benedict), Billy is heaped with abuse until, finally, an American film offers him a chance to escape.
But while Billy pines for an escape to America, Theatre Calgary’s production instead begs for a grounded centre.
Even with nine cast members, the production’s actors are utterly dwarfed by the Max Bell stage, with Harry Frehner’s bland lighting design either bathing the behemoth scene in light or offering the occasional spotlight. No more nuanced than the production’s meagre lighting, Guido Tondino’s set is a monolithic, soccer field-sized monster, blowing up Inishmaan’s meagre local general store into a sprawling affair that manages to stretch a table and counter across more than 15 metres of stage.
Into this excess of wasted space, Tondino throws a few superfluous elements, like a "beach" of haphazardly dumped sand and a rain effect that becomes invisible as soon as the set’s lighting once again whites out everything in sight. And the set’s ubiquitous bags, suspended from the ceiling, reveal themselves in the end to be a ham-fisted metaphor literally hanging above Billy’s life, but add precious little else to the play’s vision.
It’s as though Theatre Calgary has suddenly tried to abandon high production values to take a stab at small theatre minimalism in macro – ironic, considering that another McDonagh play is, in fact, running in a Calgary studio space with the Ground Zero Theatre and Hit & Myth production of The Pillowman.
Unfortunately, the set’s expansive size is complemented by Ben Barnes’s equally sprawling direction, with a staging so lifeless and a focus so meandering that the play’s otherwise brisk dialogue becomes as laboured as some of the actors’ disappearing Irish brogues. With the only overlaps in dialogue occurring in one of the evening’s occasional stumbles, each line seemed to be punctuated by a careful breath. Perhaps the production intends to add "asthmatic" to Billy’s maladies as well.
Sadly, even with a cast including proven local favourites like Paul Cowling and Goutsis, Barnes’s production doesn’t manage to bring out performances strong enough to revive its flagging energy. As a hardened drunk, Cowling brings a stoic strength that plays well against Goutsis’s pitiable frailty and Joyce Doolittle is even able to invite a few laughs as an endearing geriatric alcoholic, despite her uneven accent. But the production never finds its focus, splayed as its staging is, and no single performance can fill the span of Theatre Calgary’s stage or wring more than a few scattered laughs from the indomitable wit of McDonagh’s script.
Less than two years after his unceremonious departure as artistic director from Dublin’s floundering Abbey Theatre, Barnes’s lacklustre production is especially unfortunate given Theatre Calgary’s own repeated promotions touting Barnes as the man whose Irish roots made him a natural choice to create McDonagh’s small town world. In a play infused with the character of its place, this production had the potential to display not only its playwright’s comic gift, but also a specific cultural setting. Instead, the result is lifeless and generic. |
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