THEATRE REVIEW: THE CITY
22 Mar'10

‘The City’ not worth the visit

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 2 out of 5

TORONTO – An unexamined life may not be worth living.

Furthermore, having endured opening night of the Actors Repertory Company's production of THE CITY, one is forced to conclude that an over-examined play just might not be worth bringing to the stage.

THE CITY, written in 2008 by Brit playwright Martin Crimp as a companion piece to his THE COUNTRY, written in 2000 (and to my knowledge so far underproduced here in Canada), opened at the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs Friday.

As plays go, it is, one suspects, an interesting bit of writing, although in the end, one is left with the feeling that it is more in the nature of an artistic exercise than an enduring work of art. It all takes place on a bleak set designed by Gillian Gallow and lit by Sandra Marcroft that, in its mix of porcelain whiteness and cheap fluorescence, puts one firmly in mind of hospitals, subway stations, public washrooms and other places one may not want to spend 90 minutes of their time.

Apparently, it is the home of Clair and Christopher, a couple who have just come together at the end of a particularly trying day. For her part, Clair, a translator played by Deb Drakeford, has had an impromptu and disturbing encounter with a strange writer and his daughter, while Christopher, a business man played by Peter James Haworth, has had some disturbing intimations that professionally the ground may be shifting and the major fault line may in fact run directly beneath his feet.

In a series of seemingly linear scenes, their lives unravel from that starting point. Jobs disappear, passions grow and die and they are joined by Jenny, (Janet Porter) a troubled neighbour whose peace is under constant threat from noisy children we never hear, and by the Girl (played by Anja Bundy), who drops in to further bewilder us as Crimp spins out a tale that leaves plenty of room not just for observation but interpretation as well.

In the writing, Crimp makes it abundantly clear that, as these lives unravel, his characters exacerbate things by talking at each rather than talking to each other. But just in case you miss his point that there is very little real human connection between them, director Theodor-Cristian Popescu lays it on with a trowel.

Stripping the characters of humanity, Popescu abandons the conventional role of director in favour of that of choreographer, turning his actors into virtual slow-motion automatons in order to achieve his "vision," piling so much freight on every single word and gesture that his actors finally speak and move like they are trapped in an aquarium filled with oil.

That, of course, would be a wonderful effect, if it managed to serve the play — but here, it does nothing but drag things out, proving how boring sizzle can become when there is absolutely no steak. In the course of things, it eventually becomes obvious that the playwright had a vision of sorts which, while it may not have been enough to excuse the fractured nature of his tale, would at least have served to explain the twists and awkward turns of its writing, but Popescu's ponderous vision remains resolutely obscure.

Pretension is a lot of things, but, as this production proves, it has a way to go before it becomes truly compelling as a spectator sport.