THEATRE REVIEW: THE TEST
4 NOV/11

JOHN COULBOURN,
QMI Agency
R: 4/5


Pictured: Phillip Riccio, Eric Peterson

TORONTO - Over the past six years, Toronto audiences have learned a simple lesson: When it comes to theatre, to be in the company of the Company Theatre is to be in good company indeed. In acclaimed productions of works such as Through The Leaves, Festen and A Whistle In The Dark, this small independent company has challenged an ever-growing audience by simply challenging its artists in works that are often disturbing and darkly complex.

Which is a pretty good précis, come to think of it, for THE TEST — Company Theatre’s latest work. Presented in a co-production with Canadian Stage, THE TEST is playing at the Berkeley Street Theatre, where it opened Thursday.

Written by Swiss-Germany playwright Lukas Barfuss and translated by Birgit Schreyer Duarte, it’s a family drama played out in the living room of the Korach home. As the play opens, patriarch Simon (Eric Peterson) is listening to his only son Peter (Gord Rand) dispassionately catalogue the horrors and indignities he plans to heap on the soon-to-be remains of his faithless wife Agnes (Liisa Repo-Martell) and the son she has led him to believe he fathered. Peter has learned of Agnes’ deceit, it develops, after his father’s odd lieutenant Franzeck (Philip Riccio) purposely planted seeds of doubt, spurring Peter to undertake a mail-order paternity test — just one of many tests the family will face in the course of the play.

Simon, for instance, is in the process of running for political office in the unnamed city in which THE TEST is set — something he has done on a regular basis over the years without even achieving his goal. Nonetheless, he and the devoted but disturbed Franzeck both hope that this time will be different. With Peter’s marital meltdown threatening their plans, they summon Simon’s wife Helle (Sonja Smits) from the Indian ashram where she has been cocooned. Rather than smooth things over, her return creates more issues, and soon everyone on-stage and off is finding notions and concepts of family tested in ways that are difficult to imagine.

Director Jason Byrne goes for an often compelling European verité style of staging that covers much of the underlying horror in Barfuss’ script, with a brittle patina of civility — shattered periodically and at pivotal moments by the incisive brilliance of Richard Feren’s sound design.

Byrne also draws fine performances from this cast of thoroughbreds, moving them around John Thompson’s simple, hi-tech set (marred only slightly by a cheesy plastic sheeting window at the back), with an almost ghost-like effectiveness that often has characters not present in a scene haunting the edges of the set in the same way they haunt the edges of consciousness in their absence.

Peterson is once again fearless and superb — at least until he starts having a bit too much fun with his role — while Smits gives a heart-breakingly understated performance that defines the space between surrender and simply giving up. Repo-Martell, for her part, proves to have a delightful touch with drunken black comedy, while Rand manages to be both sympathetic and chilling. For many, however, the real break-out performance here might just be Riccio’s, proving as it does that he is indeed more than capable, in a turn as the ultimate outsider looking in, of holding his own with the best of them.

This production, while strong, still has room for improvement. Too many lines that need to be mumbled audibly are simply mumbled instead, and there’s a certain staginess throughout that transcends Byrne’s stylish Euro staging. But in the final analysis, The Test still manages to pass with flying colours.