THEATRE REVIEW: FORESTS
28 APR/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI AGENCY
Rating: 4 out of 5




TORONTO - If playwright Wadji Mouawad’s talent had been in the the visual arts, as opposed to the performing, you can bet he wouldn’t have painted many miniatures.

In an impressive 15-year career, Mouawad has carved a major niche for himself in international theatre with a series of sprawling plays that most often seem too big for the stages that try to hold them. His plays spill off and run over with a mixture of passion, poetry and pulsating life that pushes not just the theatrical but the political and the personal envelopes as well. Not surprisingly, those plays prove every bit as breathtaking on celluloid, as witnessed by the Academy Award nomination filmmaker Denis Villeneuve earned for his film adaptation of Mouawad’s Incendies.

Mouawad still has a lot to say — and a lot of it is said in FORESTS, which had its English language world première Wednesday on the Tarragon mainstage. It is a new play that stretches not only the stage of the venerable theatre to the very edge of its capacity, but also the talents of a universally gifted cast, and the imagination of its audience. Translated by Linda Gaboriau and directed by Tarragon’s Richard Rose, FORESTS is anchored in the Quebec of the recent past, for all that it ultimately seems to spend precious little time there.

It begins as an intimate family story. A married couple celebrates news of their impending parenthood with family and friends — a joyous occasion too soon shattered by the devastating news that the mother-to-be (Jan Alexandra Smith) suffers from a mysterious malady that will force her to choose between her own life and the life of her child. It’s a heart-wrenching decision for both her and her husband (Alon Nashman), rendered more so by a very public tragedy, but the decision to carry the unborn child to term results in a medical mystery that must be solved by a grown daughter (a hugely confident and gifted Vivian Endicott-Douglas), who is haunted by the fact that the life she lives came at the expense of the life her mother lost.

Aided by a scientist with a few ghosts of his own (RH Thomson), she finds herself unearthing familial roots that stretch back generations, and across oceans, into a world where shifting political alliances create victims who become victimizers, and romantic visionaries who turn utopian dreams into nightmares.

Even for Mouawad, this is a complex tale, with most of the cast juggling multiple roles in multiple eras. Dmitry Chepovetsky, Matthew Edison, David Fox, Sophie Goulet, Brandon McGibbon, Liisa Repo-Martell and Terry Tweed complete an ensemble of impressive depth and commitment. From a directorial point of view, Rose keeps a firm hand on the tiller, navigating the often turbulent waters of Mouawad’s intricate storyline without ever sinking under the weight of the playwright’s overlaying of character and time, to make a complex human mosaic. In fact the only slip-up in Rose’s confident and considered production — aided by designers Karyn McCallum (sets and costumes) and Kimberley Purtell (lights) —  is a simple one. But it proves hugely problematic, for in not demanding vocal clarity from all his actors, he leaves his audience too often scrambling to fill in missing pieces of an already dense and complex narrative.

And finally, for all the brilliance on offer, both in the writing and the playing, it seems Mouawad’s reach as a playwright might have exceeded his grasp, for after three hours of complex plot twists and character turns, it proves almost too epic to digest on an emotional level. Endicott-Douglas’s centred performance, bolstered by the always deft work of Thomson, helps. But this almost mythological tale could ultimately use a bit more humanity.