Sam Shepard’s
1983 play, Fool for Love, gets a full-throated production by Soulpepper
directed by Frank Cox-O’Connell. The play is bursting with vocal, physical and
emotional ferocity and has a cast that handle all.
The play is set
in a motel room in the Mohave Desert where we meet May (Cara Gee) and Eddie
(Eion Bailey). Within a couple of minutes loud and emotionally charged
exchanges, Eddie reaches to May and kisses her. She appears to respond but
quickly gives him a knee to his crotch and knocks him to the floor writhing in
pain. That sets the emotional standard for much of the rest of the exchanges in
the play.
Eddie and May
have had a stormy on and off relationship for 15 years. He has travelled more
than two thousand miles and is trying to reconcile with her. As the trajectory
of her knee indicates, she is bitter, and angry and in no mood to reconcile.
Eddie has done
this a number of times. He is jealous, possessive and claims to be in love with
May despite his frequent infidelities. In fact there is a countess driving a
Mercedes outside the motel room who has pursued him all the way there.
May is
understandably furious but she is so overwhelmingly in love with him that she
knows that she cannot live without him even though rationally she does not want
to be with him.
A third
character named Martin (Alex McCooeye) arrives to take May out on a date and he
acts as a catalyst for the expression of raging emotions between the couple.
Clearly there is
more than meets the eye in the relations between Eddie and May. It unfolds
slowly. There is a mysterious Old Man (Stuart Hughes) seated outside the motel
room in some sand suggesting he is not real but what is he? He communicates
with May and Eddie and speaks to audience and some awful details emerge. I will
not disclose them all for those who have not seen or read the play.
He is related to
both of them and wheat comes out in the background will throw your mind back to
the Royal House of Thebes.
Bailey and Gee
have to reach stratospheric emotional ranges and physical actions quickly and
reduce the tension just as fast. Both of them perform with amazing agility.
Bailey is quite athletic also and can easily stand on his head.
McCooeye’s
Martin is an innocent man caught in a duel that he can hardly understand. The
role can be quite funny and there are a few laughs bur Cox-O’Connell has chosen
not to emphasize the comic possibilities of a man caught in the crossfire of
raging emotions.
Stuart Hughes
has relatively smaller involvement in the warfare but his past actions play a
pivotal role in the unfolding of the drama. Hughes drinks whiskey in his
rocking chair and does a fine job as the Old Man.
Lorenzo
Savoini’s set consists of a bed and a chair in the motel room with a window
showing the desert on one side and the motel parking lot on the other side. The
Old Man, as I said, is seated just past the edge of the motel room, being a
distant and indirect part of the action.
Fool for Love lasts just over an hour with no intermission. It contains a great
deal of information about the current relationship of May and Eddie and, more
importantly, about their background and the tragedies that precede the encounter
in the motel room. That information, presented almost completely calmly in the denouement
of the play is the crux of the drama.
_______________
Fool for Love by Sam
Shepard continues until August 11, 2019 at the Young Centre for the Performing
Arts, 55 Tank House Lane, Toronto, Ontario. www.soulpepper.ca
James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture for The Greek Press. www.greekpress.ca
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