REVIEW: Talking Masks, Review by Aurora Stewart de Peña

Talking Masks

Written and Directed by Adam Seelig
Presented by One Little Goat

Featuring: Richard Harte, Jane Miller, Andrew Moodie, and Cathy Murphy
November 13th-28th, 8pm

Tickets 416-915-0201

Last February Norman and I saw Adam Selig’s production of Someone’s Going to Come by the mysterious Norwegian Jon Fosse. It was the best thing that either of us had seen in the city in a long, long time, and the reception afterward was really, really fun (cheese platter). We still talk about it, but as we’ve exhausted all of our superlative adjectives all that’s left is:

Norman: Someone’s Going to Come.

Aurora: I know, I know.

Norman: They really nailed that.

Aurora: They really did.

So we’ve been looking and looking forward to Adam Seelig’s next show with One Little Goat, and finally it came.

Talking Masks is about history’s monumentally troubled sons; Oedipus, Isaac and Ishmael. There are certainly more, and certainly other contemporaries, so I gently wonder why this combination of people was chosen by Seelig. Mostly, I don’t care. Make it about whoever you want, this piece was really interesting.

This production was built by a dream team of collaborators. Seelig himself is unfailingly innovative with text (“…Towards a Poetic Theatre…” is One Little Goat’s motto), so the dialogue, at times not dialogue at all but a rapid fire series of words and sounds with tenuous connections, is front and centre. This abandoning the I-Talk-She-Talks model serves the subject: it’s Oedipus, so we all know what’s going on. The narrative experimentation is welcome, and it allows the mind to walk down fascinating, previously unexplored paths.

Jackie Chau is the set designer, and the most unique, specific, beautiful and intelligent things fall from her brain on to the stage. It is always a pleasure to see what she’ll come up with. Her sets could sit onstage by themselves, there is so much to look at, and the negative space is just as interesting as the positive space.

Christopher Stanton’s sound design is an organized mess of crackles, static and echo. It is fortunate because Selig’s complicated picnic of words and sounds may have risked atonality without the layers laid by the loop pedals and amplifiers.

This work is based on stories so universally known they’ve become part of our language, just the very lightest hints of plot are all that is required. Just a touch of Aeschylus in Francis Bacon. Talking Masks, with all of its unconventional components, might seem incomprehensible to some. I think that’s fine. We don’t need to understand everything we see, and we don’t need to hear from the artist about how we should be interpreting what they’ve given us. It’s not interesting. It defeats the purpose of having a brain. In Seelig’s play, some participation is required on the part of the audience. Innovators like this are exactly what we need in Toronto. Read more!

FRINGE TORONTO: Red Machine-Part One, Review by Evan Webber

Red Machine

Written by Brendan Gall, Michael Rubenfeld, and Erin Shields
Directed by Chris Hanratty, Geoffrey Pounsett, and Christopher Stanton
Presented by The Room

Featuring James Cade, John Gilbert, Paula Jean-Prudat, and Tova Smith

Presented at the Lower Ossington Theatre, 100 Ossington Avenue

Playing:

Sunday July 12th 7:00pm

Notes of brave intentionality rescue this uneven, first performance by hydra-headed theatre company, The Room. The work’s collaborative origins are pushed to the foreground as the monumentally clichéd story of the-writer-alone-in-his-room gets dynamited as if by flaming-haired, cartoon miners. It's pretty slick, but the slickness sometimes masks a lack of substance, and the mashed-up, David Lynch-y text struggles against the strengths of the performers.

I saw this work with a group of friends who all hated it, and while I often sighed in sympathy with them, I was heartened by the moments of honesty in this attempt. At heart this is a simple story about art and the questions one has creating art, told in a way that's both internally resonant and humourously self-effacing. In itself this is nothing new, but the way that the company’s unmistakable commitment to this story gets blocked and obfuscated by the pressures of the cliché itself certainly says something pointed about the way our brains make sense of the things we see. And the plays succeeds in reanimating a conventional style by playing the drama of the story's own limitations.

Red Machine would benefit from a period of serious reflection and sharpening, but it’s good to see The Fringe used not just as a factory farm for stand-up and musicals; it may also be a place to experiment and it’s exciting to watch early ideas take shape. Hopefully, Part One refers to an incomplete process. Red Machine (and the people who watch it) will be rewarded when the creators apply the energy of their craftsmanship to the clarity of conception. Here’s hoping. Read more!