THEATRE REVIEW:
THE 501:
TORONTO IN TRANSIT

JOHN COULBOURN,
Special to TorSun
03 DEC 2012
R: 3/5

Pictured, L-R: Bob Nasmith,
Justin Many Fingers,
Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

TORONTO - In more than 15 years of daily commuting on the Queen line, as it is known, I’ve learned that every time you step aboard the iconic streetcar, you enter a compendium of short stories that you can pick up in progress and often have to abandon mid-tale.
 Which boded well, I thought, for the opening of THE 501: TORONTO IN TRANSIT in the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, where expectations have already been heightened by early entries in the TPM’s Beyond The Walls season, wherein the long-established company has moved well beyond its conventional stages in an effort to expand the theatrical envelope and explore the city we call home.


THE 501, which opened Saturday, is yet another entry in TPM’s history of collective creation, created and performed by a trio of local artists, fittingly drawn from diverse cultures and disciplines. Anchored by veteran actor Bob Nasmith as an avuncular narrator, providing highly personal and historical anecdotes, actor/dancer Justin Many Fingers and performer/poet Donna-Michelle St. Bernard hop aboard to add contemporary dimension and flavour. Aboard a simple evocation of a streetcar, with Nasmith more or less in the driver’s seat, the voyage begins at the western-most point of Toronto’s longest streetcar run and works its way east for just over an hour, expedited by the fact that the run from Broadview to Neville Park takes mere minutes. Along the way, expect infotainment of two types.


There is plenty of information in the “way too much” category — a category with which Queen car regulars are achingly familiar —  most of it supplied courtesy of Many Fingers and St. Bernard as they recreate close encounters of the transit kind: Fleeting collisions with mental patients, cellphone abusers and racists that are the price we pay for our space within the living tapestry that is Toronto. 
On the other hand, there is a bit too much information that falls into the “not nearly enough” category and while that might be the way street theatre unfolds on the TTC, as passengers disembark trailing unfinished personal narrative in their wake, it doesn’t make for satisfying theatre here.


In recalling the funeral of a local music icon, Nasmith alludes to offensive comments made by the officiating clergy but fails to clarify the nature of those remarks, while St. Bernard briefly references a City Hall marriage in an unintentionally smug sort of I’ve-got-a-secret style that’s just annoying. This is not one of those shows that is all talk and no action, however, as St. Bernard joins Many Fingers in choreography that, while fluid, seems to have little to do with the herky-jerk of an actual streetcar trip, and while St. Bernard’s rap interludes prove more satisfying, her sound design fails to effectively integrate them into the rest of the show with any fluidity.


Finally, like the Queen car itself, THE 501 may not represent the most elegant theatrical voyage you’ve ever taken, but in the end, it serves to get you where you are going with only minimal inconvenience.