The following reviews were broadcast Friday, February 7, 2014, CIUT FRIDAY MORNING, 89.5 FM, The Way Back To Thursday plays at Theatre Passe Muraille until Feb. 8; Tribes plays at the Berkeley Street Theatre, Downstairs until March 2.
The host was Phil Taylor.
(PHIL)
Good Friday morning. It’s theatre fix time with Lynn Slotkin, our theatre critic and passionate playgoer.
Hi Lynn
(LYNN)
Hi Phil
(PHIL)
What’s up this week?
(LYNN)
I have two productions that explore very personal issues.
The first is a song cycle about love in many guises, entitled The Way Back to Thursday by Rob Kempson, playing at Theatre Passe Muraille. And Tribes by British playwright, Nina Raine, about the politics of being hearing impaired. This plays at The Berkeley Street Theatre, Downstairs.
(PHIL)
Let’s start with The Way Back To Thursday. How is the story told in a song cycle?
(LYNN)
Rob Kempson has written, composed and performs the cycle of songs that touch on the various aspects of the maturing of a young man in the ways of love and devotion. A young man named Cameron begins by singing of a love affair that has ended. The man he was in love with no longer loves him. Cameron then sings of the unconditional love he had from his grandmother.
They would watch classical movies together on Thursdays. Which lead to other songs about Cameron coming out to his parents but not necessarily to his grandmother. Of moving to Vancouver to live in place that would be more welcoming to him than ‘home’. Of searching for a lasting love. Of remembering the fierce love of his grandmother. And going home to try and find that tight love and to find his way back to Thursday, when he and his grandmother watched classic movies together.
Cameron’s songs are interspersed with his grandmother’s songs and deal with her faith and love for him; how she had a secret (that she passed herself off as a movie star in her earlier years but really wasn’t). She sings about the life she had lead and how her life was closing down. Her last days would be in a nursing home. And how she missed Cameron, whom she hadn’t heard from in too long a time.
(PHIL)
Why do you think Rob Kempson picked the song cycle to tell his story?
(LYNN)
The song cycle in this case is a neat and efficient way to explore the bond of love between a grandson and his grandmother and then the bond, the connection Cameron develops when he goes into the world.
Rob Kempson deals with those milestones that would change a young man’s world; having to leave he safe cocoon of is grandmother’s embrace to face other kinds of life-changing embraces; Cameron faces many emotional and moral dilemma and he handles them well.
(PHIL)
Do you think the piece works?
(LYNN)
Some of the situations Kempson writes and sings about have the blush of cliché. But Mr. Kempson is a young artist, feeling, exploring and learning his way in the art form. We cut him slack for that.
Many aspects of the journey-story deserve development or re-thinking in order for there to be more of a connection to the grandmother. We have only the first song that says that the man he loved doesn’t love him in the same way and the relationship ended. That deserves exploration or cutting since we never really hear of that relationship again. The grandmother sings of her secret but we never hear that Cameron believed his grandmother was a former movie star. Surely there should be a connection there. Cameron sings of coming out to his parents who were shocked. He doesn’t tell his grandmother yet she is his closest relative. That lapse seems odd. Did she know? They were so atuned to each other. A question to be explored. The ending is terribly poignant. Does his coming back twig something in her memory? Does he stay the course even though his ‘old’ grandmother is not there fully for him?
(PHIL)
And how does it work as a production. It’s a simple story. Is it a simple production?
(LYNN)
I think it’s over done. Much has gone in to making this simple show more stylish and grand than the story needs. I find that Briana Brown’s direction is a lot of unnecessary movement for movement’s sake. Cameron is flitting all over the set. The grandmother’s movements are pared down but it still seems fussy.
Move only when it serves the song or the moment, not for the sake of moving. Beth Kates’ set of multi-levels and a huge curtain back drop is too much. Less would have been better. For some reason projections come up subtly on the large expanse of curtains. Unnecessary and confusing. Are the projections of his grandmother in her younger days? It’s not clear. And it’s not needed.
As Cameron, Rob Kempson has an endearing awkwardness; a strong voice and a sense of resolve. As Grandma, Astrid Van Wieren is both feisty and slowly dependent. She imbued spirit in her singing and acting.
The Way Back to Thursday is a serious, poignant, bitter-sweet work. I look forward to his next project, or an expansion and development of this one. Rob Kempson is a young artist who is worth your time.
(PHIL)
And tell us about Tribes.
(LYNN)
Tribes was written by British Playwright, Nina Raine. Her work has been award winning. It’s about Billy who has been hearing impaired since birth and the deliberate decision by his parents not to teach him sign language or learn it themselves. They don’t make his hearing impairment into a defining issue. Billy learns to lip-read in order to communicate. The family is the definition of dysfunctional.
The father is Christopher, an academic, and he’s a complaining bully who has an opinion, negative, about everything. His wife Beth tries to keep the piece—she’s a novelist. Ruth is their daughter who is unlucky in love and deludes herself into thinking she’s an opera singer.
Daniel is their son, also unlucky in love, narcissistic, depressive; perhaps a lover of drugs. He has tried 12 times to write his thesis but gets blocked. His father berates him at every turn. All adult children have come home to live. Billy seems to be the apple of both parents’ eyes. He can do no wrong. He’s quiet, self-contained, humble. Almost dissolves into the background. But then he meets Sylvia who is loosing her hearing. She runs a charity focusing on hearing impaired issues.They fall in love and she teaches him how to sign which this family thinks is a violent political statement; and is against everything they—Christopher believes in.
Billy learns how to sign to belong to a group—he’s always felt apart. His family doesn’t want him to be defined by his deafness.
(PHIL)
What’s Nina Raine trying to say in her play?
(LYNN)
In a way playwright Nina Raine shows how Billy is the one who really listens to what is going on around him. And in a way how the family has treated him almost as an afterthought. She does bring up questions of belonging, communication and what signing really means. Is lip-reading a more positive political statement than sign-language? Does being deaf really define a person as Christopher suggests?
Billy becomes really hard-nosed in his beliefs. He has a startling challenge to his parents at the end of the play.
(PHIL)
And does the production do justice to the play?
(LYNN)
The cast is stellar lead by Stephen Drabicki as Billy. He is self-effacing, sweet, accommodating, until he is empowered and then he is animated, silently vocal and commanding.
As Daniel, Dylan Trowbridge is wiry, possessive—he wants Daniel to stay there with him because Billy gives Daniel the attention he seems to be lacking. Or perhaps Billy is someone Daniel can control. And as Christopher, Joseph Ziegler is bombastic, critical, know-it-all- and properly annoying.
But I have great trouble with the direction of Daryl Cloran. He’s a young director and I can appreciate he wants to put his own stamp on the production. But what I see here is a heavy handed touch. If a stage direction calls for music, Cloran pumps it up to deafening. A few quiet cords of an orchestra warming up opens the show, but then the sound becomes so loud that it’s painful. OK, WE GET IT!!!!
Cloran does this all through the show. It’s called overkill. here’s a huge difference as well when the stage direction at the end says that the two brothers hug with their arms formed into the signed word: love, and what Choran ends with—both brothersstand a distance apart, facing each other signing the word love only Daniel smiles and signs the word gently and Billy has his hands in fists and has a facial expression that is angry and aggressive. his completely ignores the intension of the playwright.
So in brief, I love the play but don’t like Daryl Cloran’s heavy-handed production of it.
(PHIL)
Thanks Lynn. That’s Lynn Slotkin our theatre critic and passionate playgoer. You can read Lynn’s Blog at www.slotkinletter.com
The Way Back to Thursday plays at Theatre Passe Muraille until February 8.
Tribes plays at the Berkeley Street Theatre, Downstairs until March 2.