THEATRE REVIEW:
I ON THE SKY

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
12 OCT 2012
R: 4/5

Pictured: The Ensemble

At first blush, DynamO Théâtre's production of I ON THE SKY, currently playing at Young People's Theatre, might seem a strange, even over-demanding, choice for an organization justly celebrated for its ability to bring theatre artists and young audiences together to the enduring maximum benefit of both. But not so fast.

Created for the Montreal-based company and directed by Yves Simard, the hour-long work may be all but devoid of spoken text, but it nonetheless fluently and fluidly blends music, movement and, of course, some high quality acting to tell a complex story of a young woman who finds herself alone and unanchored on a park bench in some un-named park, a refugee full of hope but haunted by her memories.

But as told by the the artists of DynamO Théâtre, her story really needs no words. Tormented and bullied by a group of teenage thugs, the waif-like heroine nonetheless finds refuge not only in the occasional kindness of the strangers who mill around her but in her own memories of familial and romantic love — memories that appear to grow from the very music they evoke. That music (composed by J.S. Bach and Christian Légaré) and an ever-shifting sky-scape that serves constantly to enhance the ever-shifting mood (part of an ingenious set created by Simard and Pierre-Étienne Locas) are the only additional clues the five-member cast use to enhance a story they tackle with an almost ferocious intensity and physicality.

And while the absence of dialogue might initially prove distancing for some members of their young audience , the athleticism and commitment in performances crafted by Laurianne Brabant, Andréanne Joubert, Marie-Ève Lafontaine, Frédéric Nadeau and Hugues Sarra-Bournet soon serve to draw that young audience into the heart and soul of these characters and the story they tell. In the finest sense, this is a theatrical colouring book that challenges its young audience to fill in the emotional colours of the story that is being outlined on stage.

And such a story. Using a rich mix of dance, acrobatics and mime, these artists populate the their un-named park with a rich pastiche of humanity, blending the rambunctiousness of youth and the self-involvement of the middle class into a tasty stew that requires no heavy handed preachiness as spice. Instead, there is wit aplenty, all offered up in a style that trusts its audience to figure out right from wrong, the humane from the inhumane.

Only in the portrayal of an old lady do they stoop to clichéd caricature, making infirmity an object of gentle derision and thus marring an otherwise strong piece of theatrical art. But such an oversight can almost be forgiven in a work that boldly challenges a young audience to blend their own imaginations with those of the performers to enrich their theatrical experience, instead of simply sitting back and becoming passive young theatrical consumers.