Celine Stubel (l) and Jan Alexandra Smith are incredible in Tyland at playRites.

DETAILS

24th Annual Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays presented by ATP
Martha Cohen Theatre
Wednesday, February 3 - Sunday, March 7

More in: Theatre

Cabin fever. The effects of confining a few people in a room and letting them drive each other crazy. From Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf to Theatre Calgary’s No Exit (featured in last month’s High Performance Rodeo), this is a common yet fascinating plot device in theatre, where characters rarely emerge unscathed. Greg MacArthur’s Tyland, one of four plays at the Enbridge playRites Festival, banishes its two pregnant female protagonists to the Arctic, letting tensions mount and personalities clash in a small cabin on a remote uninhabited island.

MacArthur’s play imagines a surreal study of isolation, distrust, values, faith and the true meaning of art.

After being caught for trespassing and vandalism, young and pregnant Ami (Celine Stubel) faces heavy fines and jail for her “public art.” She is, however, offered an alternative: partake in a government program populating one of the thousands of Arctic islands in order to get the upper hand in a territorial spat.

She moves in and shares a cabin with Karen (Jan Alexandra Smith), a cheerful, older, motherly figure who could not be more different from Ami. But something is immediately amiss. Karen has voluntarily decided to come here. She feels she was chosen by her deity so that her child, born in exile, will heal the world. As this claustrophobic play progresses, the perplexing setting and the staunch characters make it difficult to decipher the meaning of it all.

Can mothers and their babies be used as political weapons? Is the entire campaign just a cruel social experiment? Is life about violent acts of creation, or making meaningful human connections? Tyland poses these questions, amongst others, yet stubbornly refuses to take sides.

In line with the play’s frigid setting, the characters are surprisingly cold and distant — the intensity never reaches a boiling point, even at the climax. These are women with beliefs and values, people who have experienced true passion and loss, and yet their surroundings and circumstances are so strange that it restricts complete involvement. Each character is constructed through careful dialogue, but none are given the resolution or thematic closure they so desperately need.

Story aside, the staging is a sight to behold. On a round, bottom-lit Plexiglas floor, the sparse stacks of boxes that make up the set are increasingly strewn about. The floor gets messier as the two women wear on each other. Behind them are sheets of plastic curtain, illuminated by the shifting colour tones of the northern lights. A date marker occasionally tracks the passage of time.

Oppressively atmospheric, the constant haze of smoke and ominous sounds firmly plant the women on alien terrain. The sound design, with its guttural throat singing and industrial drones, can be downright terrifying.

The play is dialogue-heavy and there’s rarely a break in the conversation. Both Stubel and Smith are incredible. As their bellies get bigger and their emotions run higher, it is a back-and-forth battle with no clear winner.

Philip (Kevin Corey), the government representative who sends the women to these islands, takes command of his few scenes, forcing his life story on anyone who will listen, and giving surprising depth and empathy to his brief monologues (“I have quotas to keep. I have over a hundred islands over my watch, over my jurisdiction!”). Without ruining the ending, the late appearance of Geoffrey Brown in the epilogue brings many of Tyland’s elements full circle, but the play leaves some strands hanging.

Tyland’s inspired concept invites you in with flashes of brilliance, but ultimately falls short in the final execution by not following through.