Drift offers a dark peek into the future THEATRE
Straight choices
GENETIC DRIFT
2Written by Amy Lee Lavoie. Conceived and directed by Richard Wolfe. A Pi Theatre production, presented as part of Boca del Lupo’s Micro Performance Series. At the Fishbowl on Wednesday, April 5. No remaining performances Genetic Drift is a cool theatrical experience with a compelling premise, but its storytelling comes up short.
Director Richard Wolfe conceived the piece as part of Boca del Lupo’s Expedition Series, which asks artists to envision our world 150 years in the future. Playwright Amy Lee Lavoie positions the audience as a gathering of the “ultra elite” who’ve paid big bucks for an exclusive peek into the future. Our unctuous host (Alex Forsyth) invites us to contemplate under what circumstances we might be willing to live forever, then unveils Gary 3 (Tom Jones), the future’s genetically altered human with the “face of a microbe”. Gary 3 doesn’t want to be looked at, especially not by us, and his contempt for humanity circa 2017 leads to some darkly funny observations.
I can’t say too much more without spoiling the surprises; the show is only 35 minutes long, but it ends without having built to a satisfying climax. Gary 3 alludes to two previous Garys and a couple of Marys, but we get only enough details to infer the cause of Gary 3’s existential despair, and although Lavoie gets in some witty lines, Gary 3’s haranguing of the audience becomes repetitive.
Jones does a terrific job in the role. With his face completely obscured by Amy Mcdougall’s creepy mask (based on the microscopic tardigrade, famed for its resilience), Jones relies entirely on his masterful vocal inflection to keep the encounter intimate. Jergus Oprsal’s minimalist set and moody lighting and Daniel O’shea’s video, especially a trippy dream sequence, add to the experience.
But more story might create a deeper emotional immersion and a more satisfying tussle with questions about the future of human longevity.
> KATHLEEN OLIVER THE WATERSHED
By Annabel Soutar. Directed by Chris Abraham. A Porte Parole and Crow’s Theatre production, with support from La Coop Fédérée. At Gateway Theatre on Friday, April 7. Continues until April 15
Everything about The Watershed 2 is huge: its physical scale, its thematic ambition, and the stakes attached to the issues it explores. There is much to enjoy in the virtuosity of this production, but not enough to sustain the nearly three-hour running time.
Montreal playwright Annabel Soutar specializes in documentary theatre, drawing her text entirely from interviews, media transcripts, and other real-world sources. Vancouver audiences last saw her work three years ago when Seeds, an exploration of Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser’s legal battles with agri-business giant Monsanto, came here as part of the Push Festival. In Seeds, the playwright becomes a character in her own play, but the central story is Schmeiser’s. In The Watershed, Soutar’s efforts to create this script are its dramatic heart.
Liisa Repo-martell returns in the role of Annabel; this time she’s researching water, one of Canada’s most abundant—and vulnerable— resources. In the 90-minute first act, Annabel interviews scientists, activists, corporate executives, and politicians on both sides of the former Conservative government’s 2012 decision to close the Experimental Lakes Area, a research facility in northern Ontario. She and her husband, Alex (Alex Ivanovici, playing himself), enlist the help of their two young daughters in learning about the issues. Act 2 sees the whole family taking a road trip to get a close-up look at Alberta’s tarsands.
As he did with Seeds, director Chris Abraham infuses this sometimes dry material with incredibly energetic staging: the cast of eight are always on the move, briskly trading off roles in constantly shifting locales and contexts. And the actors are terrific, whether they’re playing members of Soutar’s family or public figures like Maude Barlow and (pre-scandal) Jian Ghomeshi. Special mention goes to Brenda Robins, Molly Kidder, and Virgilia Griffith, all unaffectedly ebullient as preteen girls, and Eric Peterson, as Soutar’s conservative father, gives us some moving scenes.
The play’s design is also spectacular. Set designer Julie Fox fills the enormous playing area with wooden pallets, pipes, and plumbing fixtures before an expanse of brick wall that serves as a canvas for Denyse Karn’s exquisite projections. Thomas Ryder Payne’s immersive sound design and Kimberly Purtell’s gorgeous lighting enhance the atmosphere.
But for all its energy and passion, The Watershed isn’t easy to connect with emotionally. For one thing, the urgency of Annabel’s research is a few years old. It’s a strange feeling, summoning retroactive fury at the Harper government’s well-demonstrated contempt for science.
It’s also a bold move for Soutar to put Annabel front and centre; I don’t think she succeeds at making the minutiae of her research as interesting to an audience as they obviously are to her.
The Watershed is a mixed success. As agitprop theatre, it’s dated; as a personal story, it’s self-indulgent. The liveliness of its staging is no small achievement. But I was hoping for more.
> KATHLEEN OLIVER
HUMAN CALCULATIONS Mathematics is an art form in itself, as proven by Pi Theatre’s number-charged Long Division. This is a “refreshed remount” of Peter Dickinson’s ambitious work, one that circles around seven seemingly unrelated characters (including a high-school math teacher, a soccer-loving imam, and a lesbian bar owner) bound together by a single traumatic incident. Directed by Richard Wolfe, with choreography by Lesley Telford and musical score by Owen Belton, it’s a multimedia, movementdriven piece that has a strong cast. It should set your left brain firing in the intimate space of the Annex (823 Seymour Street) from April 26 to 30.