Local theatre is Playing Bare

Evolution Theatre’s latest is fascinating, complex

Actors Jerome Bourgault (left) and William Bedoe (right) in PLaying Bare

When an author references a canonical work, they always risk its shadow rising and overwhelming their effort. But Dominic Champagne’s Playing Bare manages to weave the shade of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot into a symbiotic whole with his own narrative. Unfortunately, this means that an audience needs some knowledge of Beckett’s work to fully appreciate it, but Playing Bare is an ambitious and complex play.

The meat of the story is that childhood friends Victor (William Beddoe) and Etienne (Jerome Bourgault) are aimless, ambling, regular-Joe dopes brought into the theatre by Luce (Kel Parsons) to play Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s classic. Luce believes that by presenting the masterwork on stage with as much verisimilitude as possible, a piece of truly revolutionary theatre will happen and the “soul” of humanity will be presented on stage.

But Luce herself is a brutally satiric portrait of the venial, self-centred actress. From the first she whines and wheezes in complaint like a broken bagpipe. She is “empty,” her “soul is empty,” she has “nothing left to give,” the litany of complaints drags on endlessly and you’re almost tempted to sympathize. But Luce’s hopeless stupidity is obvious as she stands outside the rehearsal space for an hour dreaming up a suitable entrance, or as she proclaims pompously that “since Hiroshima” people are neither happy nor sad, but only sick or tired. Her desire is to present herself in the role of Lucky, a Beckett character graced with a single monologue of powerfully insane chatter – suitably, the role in which she sees her soul revealed naked is the one which contains no substance at all.

Kel Parsons did an excellent job with an incredibly difficult role. It’s clear in her comic delivery of lines like “before coming to the theatre I couldn’t decide whether to act… or to act…” that she sees the satire inherent in the part. But even given her genuine talent, her character struck the same note constantly to my ears, and as with anything in life the repetition began to numb my response to her.

Her doomed insanity is contrasted with Pipo (Lawrence Aronovitch), Luce’s exasperated acting mentor, and Blanche (Chantale Plante), her long-suffering assistant. Pipo is the truth-teller of the play, constantly trying to cajole Luce back to sanity. Aronovitch is touching as a being caught in Luce’s doomed orbit, trying to drag her to sanity but lacking the strength to resist.

Beddoe and Bourgault are both very well placed in their roles. Beddoe’s Victor affects a dopey grin and dreams his way obliviously through Luce’s meltdowns, while Bourgault keeps up a constantly dismal, foul-mouthed patter at the whole proceeding. Both drift through the comedy with ease but each has a single scene of real, absolute beauty in the play that surprised and stuck indelibly to me (you’ll know which ones). As did the finale, which despite unfolding exactly as I expected, I still found shockingly moving.

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – Sept 11, 2008
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=15526