LOVE AND GOODBYE
Crees in the Caribbean doesn’t really hit home until the final scene
In spite of everything, people are pretty much the same wherever you go. That seems to be the underlying message in Ojibway playwright Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Crees in the Caribbean.”
So, when Cecil and Evie Poundmaker, a Cree couple from Saskatchewan, take a 35th anniversary trip to Mexico, it’s not surprising they find some warmth that has little to do with Mexican sunshine.
Warm and touching connections are made with a young Mexican woman who is responsible for cleaning their hotel room. It wouldn’t matter a whit really whether Taylor’s play was about Crees or Italian Canadians, it’s pretty much universal in its way of suggesting people can relate with others if they are open and interested.
Taylor doesn’t ask us to dig too deeply for meaning in what is ultimately a sweet, but slight play, that says something about love and the sadness of saying goodbye.
That said, you would be forgiven
for thinking “Crees in the Caribbean” was meant as a prototype for a television sitcom. Only in the final scene when things turn serious does the play connect on more than a superficial level.
Before that, we have to work hard to find pleasure in Taylor’s look at a couple trying to hang on to what made their 35-year marriage fulfilling.
Designer Michelle Bohn’s hotel room is an attractive replication of a Mexican resort, with a little terrace balcony off room 413 that allows us a feel of the outside world. Her representation of an alley behind the hotel building doesn’t work half as well, looking sketchy, in spite of an elaborate turntable revelation.
When the Poundmakers arrive in Mexico the towel swans are
sitting on their double bed along with thechocolates on the pillows.
All seems set for a restoration of romance. But no, things get in the way.
Evie is explosive and energetic. She’s all for rushing out to the parasailing site nearby. Cecil is less wound-up about life. He’s all for stretching out on the comfortable hotel bed and having a nap. These two realize marriage is all about compromise, but this trip has something more than that behind it. That something isn’t revealed until later.
In some ways we almost know these characters too well right from the get go. It has to be said, at times they are not as endearing as they might be.
It doesn’t help that Michelle Thrush’s Evie is far too loud and strident. Her characterization doesn’t make her easy to like. Some of this is Taylor’s revelation about her past, but much more is her bombastic performance that gives the play aggressive but annoying energy.
Lawrence Bayne’s Cecil is easier to care about, if only he wasn’t forced to switch gears into cartoon mode in the play’s second act. Would he really strut about in a flashy, outlandish two piece outfit that screams outrageous? He’s not from Boca Raton. He’s from Saskatchewan. Nothing we’ve seen of him so far suggests anything like this would happen. His whole character changes from this point on and what had been building to something substantial is flushed down the drain until the final scene.
Thrush and Bayne work well together, but they haven’t been given situations or lines to make them truly believable.
Their relationship with Arlen Aguayo Stewart’s Manuela, their maid, is the best part of the play, although even here you wonder why they are getting so involved in her troubled life.
How much you’ll like “Crees in the Caribbean” might have to do with how willing you are to laugh at lines and situations that are sometimes disconnected and forced.
It wasn’t until the theatre went beautifully quiet at the final moments of the play that this comedy’s true heart began to beat.
I cared about the characters. I forgot their silly antics and felt something honest, even if I still didn’t quite believe most of what had happened during their troubled holiday in the Mexican sunshine.