When someone is searching for a phrase to describe a performance they liked but that maybe went a little bit over their heads, they'll often say it was “weird in a good way.” As it's more-or-less a critic's entire job to think up more verbose yet less coherent ways of saying exactly this, theatre reviews tend to be riddled with clichés like “implacable charm,” “sterling wit,” “rough edges” and references to a piece's “gestalt.” Let the log line for Alberta Theatre Projects’ The Gift of the Coat stand, then, as: An implacably charming performance rife with examples of sterling wit, absurdist comedy and genuine pathos. Despite a few rough edges, Coat gets by on a refined sense of gestalt.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Sean Dixon's latest script is that it seems to be meticulously designed to produce exactly the sentiment illustrated by the two magnificently bad sentences at the end of the last paragraph. Certain themes and messages are wilfully murky, supporting characters are sucked purposefully into cliché by an equally oblique methodology and the dialogue is so banal and repetitious in places it's headache-inducing. Of course, all of this is certainly intentional, but that intention is obscured, perhaps, by a desire to manipulate a kind of false thoughtfulness from the audience. The result is something like late Beckett, only with meaning deliberately removed rather than myriad contradictory meanings injected. To step away from the academic balderdash and make a nervous attempt to put things clearly: Coat is at its best when its meaning is transparent, and when it's at its best, it's actually very good.
The story follows Ned, a vagrant who meets his demise at the outset, and reawakens to find himself hanging in the arms of a flying, talking overcoat. Being dead, Ned has no control over his body, leaving all locomotive agency up to the surprisingly capable coat. Being a coat, the coat is unable to remove the dead hobo from its sleeves, and the two are forced to put up with each other's company. Determined to find its “proper wearer” (the rich man who gave Ned the coat before he died), the coat lifts Ned into the air, and the pair fly across the world in search of him.
When Dixon's focus is on the growing friendship between Ned and the Coat, Ned's secret desire for self-respect, or, you know, grown men running around on stage gawping like seagulls, Coat is touching, kinetic and hilarious. When he starts dwelling on the nature of fashion as a cosmetic practice or debating the wisdom in seeing life as a series of meaningful events, for example, Dixon doesn't seem to know exactly what he wants to say. His solution is to sidestep the resolution of some emotional threads entirely, and the show feels awfully loose in places as a result. Still, if Beckett is the first name that comes to mind when trying to think of a writer to compare Dixon to — no matter what caveats are attached — he isn't doing too badly.
Part of what helps Coat to ultimately work as well as it does is the marvel of its technical execution. The lighting, sound, set and costume design are all fabulously effectuated, often with a knowing silliness that complements Dixon's already funny script. For the obvious low budget of the performance, both the lighting and sound design stand out in particular, their swells, fades, transitions and references to previous cues texture the show in such a way that it’s impossible to think of it without them. In some instances, it seems as though director Amiel Gladstone is trying to make up for some of the shortcomings of the script through subtle use of lighting and sound — and in some instances, he's quite successful.
Still, for all the quibbles Coat opens itself up to, it's still an enjoyable 90 minutes spent in the dark with hundreds of strangers. Most reasonable people will forgive a show's first staging a few flaws, and Coat’s flaws could be easily overlooked in any case. If pressed to reconcile the piece's narrative problems with its overall delightfulness, perhaps the best answer is simply the one I've just spent seven hundred words writing around. It's weird, but in a good way.
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