One play, many directions
Up the Garden Path K (out of 4) Written by Lisa Codrington, directed by Philip Akin. Until April 10 at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave. obsidiantheatre.com or 416-504-7529
To lead someone up the garden path is to mislead them: to take them for a bit of a ride. The reference in the title of Lisa Codrington’s new comedy is presumably to its heroine Rosa (Virgilia Griffith), a migrant from Barbados who dresses like a man to get a job at a Niagara winery in the late 1970s.
But it could also refer to the play’s overcomplicated storytelling structure, which leads the viewer off in so many directions that no one plot line (even Rosa’s) really comes together. Some curious casting and uneven tone in Philip Akin’s Obsidian Theatre production also contribute to confusion. Codrington’s voice is original and lively and there are some simply wonderful ideas here; the concern is that they’ve not been presented in a form that allows audiences to fully appreciate them.
Play and production are at their strongest in the second half, which takes place at the winery as Rosa gets to know her quirky employers and her disguise starts to slip.
The farmer Isaac (named for Brock, played by Alex McCooeye) is obsessed with the starlings decimating the winery crops but is really more interested in his work as an 1812 reenactor at Fort George. His sister Laura (yes, as in Secord, and played by the impressively focused Sochi Fried) is convinced that if she studies hard enough she’ll get an audition to play Saint Joan — a satiric reference to the improbable omnipresence of the works of the 19th-century mor- alist given the Shaw Festival’s Niagara location.
Codrington’s most captivating conceit is that of the soldier Richard (Marcel Stewart, excellent), a ghost from the War of 1812 caught in limbo and on a hilariously desperate quest to finally get himself killed off good and proper.
If there is anything holding this overly rambunctious narrative journey together it’s Griffith’s agile performance and she’s at her best in her exchanges with Stewart: there is a delightful chemistry between them. The scene in which Rosa, Richard and Laura join forces to get rid of the starlings (illustrated by Cameron Davis’s excellent projections) and knock Richard off at the same time is the one point where the production and play achieve the tone of comic-froth-with-underlying-seriousness that appears to be the goal.
The plot device that allows Richard to communicate with Rosa while everyone else can’t see him ties things back to opening scenes in Barbados, which frankly feel like another play entirely.
Anna Treusch’s smart set design — a high patchwork wall of boards and shutters with flaps that cast members haul up and down — helps Akin create the mixed interior/exterior environments called for here; the sounds of cicadas and storms (Verne Good), and warm lighting (Steve Lucas) also add usefully to the atmosphere.
One-note vignettes in the second half of the family trying to get Rosa on the phone underline the disconnection between the play’s parts; and a penultimate scene bringing together themes of slavery, the role of black soldiers in the 1812 War (Richard is black) and Rosa’s displacement all the way back to her mother’s marginal position in Barbadian society feels like a failed dramaturgical Hail Mary pass.
Key among Codrington’s ambitions may be to offer a perspective on migrant experiences that acknowledges their hardship without overplaying narratives of misery and victimhood. This play needed more development and shaping to deliver fully on this admirable goal.