Other People’s
Children - Niki Landau, Elisa Moolecherry and Gray Powell
Photography by Nir Bareket.
Reviewed by James Karas
The Tarragon Theatre
is running a mini-festival of the plays of Hannah Moscovitch, its
playwright-in-residence, and it has staged two new one-act plays by her. They
are
Little One and Other People’s Children in a Double
Bill.
Little One has two characters, Aaron
(Joe Cobden) and Claire (Michelle Monteith), who happen to be two adopted
siblings. We are told that Claire is a monster and we quickly realize that she
is a full-blown psychopath and perhaps worse, whatever that may be. She unzips
a neighbour’s fly, flushes a goldfish down the drain, stabs her brother, stabs
herself, kills his cat and so on to incest.
Her brother is the
victim of most of this psychotic behavior and he has to put up with his
parents’ attempts to justify or minimize the hideousness of his sister’s acts.
We are told a
parallel story about a neighbour who has imported a pretty girl from Viet Nam
and they appear to be perfectly in love. You know there will be a twist to that tale.
The set is a simple
couch and most of the play is done in the dark with a spotlight or a flashlight
for illumination. Much of the plot is narrated as opposed to being acted out. Little One struck me as a marvelous
short story struggling to become a play and not being entirely successful.
Cobden is an
excellent story-teller. His hesitations, vocal intonations and body language
stand him well both when acting or simply telling the story. Monteith gets to
speak many lines while shining a flashlight in her face. She is an understated
psychopath who apologizes for her misbehavior and she does hide a secret wound
that may provide an explanation for whatever she is doing.
Natasha Mytnowych
directs this journey into darkness.
Other People’s
Children is a better structured play that does not rely on
narrative for its story. Ilana (NIki Landau) is a sharp-nosed, aggressive and
successful lawyer who wants to excel at everything. Her husband Ben (Gray
Powell) is a successful businessman (we are not sure what he does) who travels
a lot and makes important deals. This powerhouse couple has a daughter and they
hire Sati, a nanny to look after her.
Sati (Elisa
Moolecherry) is a Tamil engineer with three children. She has left them in Sri
Lanka while her husband has gone to Japan under suspicious circumstances. Sati
is attractive, intelligent, loving and deferential with some mystery and a few
question marks attached to her name.
Moscovitch develops
quite a marvelous play around the emotional and sexual warfare among the three
characters. The child becomes very attached to her nanny sparking jealousy in
Ilana. Ben and Sati become attracted to each other while there is sexual
tension between him and his wife. The whole thing comes to a dramatic climax
when it is discovered that the baby is sucking Sati’s nipple. This is a
startling combination of the sexual and the ultimately maternal instinct.
The play is too short
to develop the characters completely and there are some loose ends at the end
but it is a fascinating work nonetheless.
Moolecherry is
wonderful as Sati. She combines modesty and manipulation perfectly. Landau is
all ambition, jealousy and sex while Ben is trying to negotiate the dangerous
waters between an overambitious lawyer, his mother (not seen in the play) and
the attractive and very interesting nanny.
Paul Lampert directs
the play at a very brisk pace with its numerous costume changes
A very interesting and
stimulating evening at the theatre.
______
Little One and Other
People’s Children by
Hannah Moscovitch opened on February 21, and will run until March 24, 2013 at
the Tarragon Theatre’s Extra Space, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto ,
Ontario .
www.tarragontheatre.com
No comments:
Post a Comment