All that naked truth can’t hide a wobbly script
A THOUGHT IN THREE PARTS at Motel through April 4 theatreoutre.ca out of five
The idea at the heart of A Thought in Three Parts isn’t half bad.
That’s the name of the mid1970s drama ( in three parts) by Wallace Shawn, who also wrote Aunt Dan and Lemon, My Dinner With Andre and starred in The Princess Bride.
Before he became a cult movie figure, Shawn wrote this show, three slender scenes featuring an assortment of characters who all keep making the same mistake; they confuse their quest for an orgasm with a search for fulfilment.
Right from the get- go, we know ( emotional) wires are being crossed in Summer Evening, a hotel room scene between Sarah ( Samantha Jeffrey) and David ( Ryan Reese), a young married couple on vacation who — if they ever experienced any sexual chemistry between them — have lost the spark.
Instead, they address each other in a kind of archaic, overly formal dialogue.
“Yes, darling!” says David, or a variation thereof, about a dozen different times.
It’s all about the disconnection the 1970s sexual revolution forgot to mention in its manifesto on rewriting human relationships.
That gets expressed loud and clear in Part 2, The Youth Hostel, which features a quartet of young travellers exploring their sexuality while spouting absurd dialogue that none of the other characters really take in.
Almost of all of this is done naked — I think the Motel sets a nudity record with this one — with the text delivered straight to the audience, rather than the other character in the scene, to accentuate each character’s emotional isolation.
It’s all accompanied by a goofball soundscape that underscores each character’s orgasm ( they tend to have them in isolation) by underscoring it, like when you ring the bell at one of those games of chance at the Stampede.
I guess Youth Hostel director Jay Whitehead intends that to be funny, but it soon becomes tiresome.
The cast deserves full marks for committing to the project, particularly Brett Dahl as Tom, the one performer who seems to be truly inhabiting his character, rather than simply commenting on it ( although, to be fair to the cast, Shawn’s script is one long comment on the characters).
By the time a fifth character arrives in the youth hostel and drops his drawers about 20 seconds after arriving onstage, the shock value of being in a room full of nude dudes has dwindled to nothing.
In fact, all that casual ’ 70s nudity, experienced now, feels like more of a smokescreen to cover up for a wobbly script written by a young, eager- to-offend 1970s playwright ( whose father happened to be the editor of The New Yorker) who still hadn’t acquired any measure of skill.
Director Whitehead delivers a coda in a bathtub, in Mr. Frivolous, the final scene of the three, where the tone suddenly turns poetic and wistful.
But by then, whatever thought Wallace Shawn started out trying to express has been replaced by a different one: relief, mercifully, that A Thought in Three Parts is over.