By James Karas
Seminar is a play
about writing, becoming a writer, drink, drugs, ambition, sex and the life of a
certain segment of New York society that exists mostly in the imagination of
hoi polloi.
Theresa Rebeck’s 2011 play has five reasonably well-developed and
distinct characters who engage in some or all of the above-noted practices with
wit sarcasm, meanness, lust, pain and brutality. In other words, they are very
entertaining.
The cast of Seminar. Photo: Dylan Hewlett
The key player is Leonard (Tom McCamus), a formerly successful novelist
who has fallen on bad times. He is drunk, high on drugs, rude, crude,
offensive, and obnoxious. Apparently he
is also a very god judge of writing.
Four young would-be writers pay Leonard handsome amounts of money to
have him comments on their work. They gather in a nine-room apartment in the
Upper Eastside of Manhattan and Leonard who is as usual high on something
starts tearing into the young hopefuls.
He reads about five words of Kate’s (Andrea Houssin) short story that
she has been writing for years and tears it to shreds mercilessly. He does find
some positive things to say about a couple of the other writers before axing
their hopes but we can only discuss literary
ambitions for so long. We need sex.
Izzy (Grace Lynn Kung) is beautiful, desirable and available. She gives
Martin (Nathan Howe) the best sex he has ever tasted and Leonard partakes as
well. Yes, there are moral issues here but let’s just forget them.
Leonard does zero in on the abilities of his students between being
insufferably insulting and cruel. The well-connected Douglas (Ryan James
Miller) can write a workman-like novel but his best bet is to go to Hollywood. This
advice comes after he calls him whorish.
Kate manages to get approval when she pretends that the piece she
submits is by a Cuban transvestite. But Leonard does espy a true voice in what
she writes. He beds her and helps her get a ghost-writing job.
Martin is poor, idealistic and afraid to submit his work to Leonard.
Eventually he does and sees the work that Leonard is doing and the play reaches
its climactic end.
McCamus could hardly do or be expected to do a less than superb job in
the role of Leonard. His lined face, his rumpled hair and clothes, his gravelly
voice all combine to give a splendid performance as the obnoxious but tortured
and talented writer/editor.
The rest of the cast give impressive performances. Andrea Houssin
garners laughs and sympathy as she eats to get fat when she is depressed until
she finds a way to get approval and sex from Leonard. Miller’s Douglas is cool,
ambitious, uppity and well-connected and must swallow the bitter criticism that
Leonard shovels at him.
Kung’s Izzy is a sexual magnet with some writing talent. Howe’s Martin
is intense, sensitive and at times childish but he does grow up during the
play.
Stewart Arnott’s directing is sensitive and precise. The acting and
reacting is finely modulated so that we see the aim of every insult and bit of
praise painted on the face of the recipient and the faces of the other actors.
Seminar is a well-crafted play that combines the high
ground of literature, the middle ground of ambition, fear and search for a way
to literary success and the lower floors of sex, insult and drugs. Just the
sort of place you want to visit.
Highly enjoyable.
_______
Seminar by Theresa Rebeck opened on November 14 and
will play until December 6, 2015 at the Panasonic Theatre, 651 Yonge St. Toronto ,
Ontario . www.mirvish.com
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