Thriller is smart and sexy
Genevieve Adam’s Dark Heart is a sexy thriller set in 17th-century New France depicting interactions between settler and Indigenous communities. That’s a complex mix and one that Adam accomplishes ably, aided by a taut and thoughtful production by Tyler J. Seguin for the indie company Thought for Food.
The century after colonial contact is a fascination for Adam. Dark Heart is the prequel to Deceitful Above All Things, which premiered at the 2015 Summer-Works Festival, and is part of a planned New France Trilogy.
Dark Heart opens with the soldier Amable Bilodeau (Michael Iliadis) stumbling into an intrigue-filled community when he rescues the Métis fur trader Toussaint Langlois (Garret C. Smith, who is Blackfoot from the Peigan and Kainai Tribes in Alberta) from drowning in a river. Seguin’s staging of the play’s first moment — the two men spitting out water explosively to a well-timed lighting cue (design by Imogen Wilson) — sets up a cracking pace that continues throughout the 80-minute running time.
Adam has written seven rich characters who all have a lot at stake and whose lives are revealed to be intertwined in fascinating and often quite unexpected ways. I found my allegiances shifting as character and plot points were revealed, and this seemed to mirror the experiences of the characters — always on their guard, discovering how foolish it is to trust appearances.
Trusting Toussaint leaves Amable without his musket and sporting a head wound that lands him in the rustic cabin of Lizzie Ramezay, the local bone-setter (unlicensed doctor) who, we find out, does a sideline in backwoods abortions. This is a humdinger of a role — independent, clever, necessarily pragmatic and unapologetically lusty — that the playwright Adam takes on herself with effective relish.
At a moment when questions of stage intimacy are in the spotlight, it is notable how well this production handles its numerous embraces and caresses (intimacy and fight direction is by Siobhan Richardson and Jade Elliott McRae). These moments add to the play’s depiction of a treacherous environment in which women are scarce — therefore endangered, but also powerful — and carnal pleasure offers respite from hardship and uncertainty.
Another strand of the story concerns Dr. Joseph Sarrazin (John Fitzgerald Jay), who runs the local hospital with the help of the nurse Sister Marie (Brianne Tucker, who is Métis). Their first scene together expertly packs in a lot of exposition and is an entertaining match of wits. Joseph takes heat from the landowner Louis de Lamothe (Paul Rivers) when he discovers that his wife, Madeleine (Audrey Clairman), who he had committed to the hospital, has escaped.
But is the problem mental illness or Madeleine’s rumoured affair with an Indigenous man? In what ways is Sister Marie implicated in her story? How do female solidarity — and other motivations — entangle Lizzie in Madeleine’s flight?
These intrigues unfurl with the pace and aplomb of a good old-fashioned bodice-ripper (and there are a lot of knowing laughs along the way), but the integration of the theme of shape-shifting takes the play to a higher level of ambition. Largely through Joseph’s monologues, we hear rumours of loups-garous — werewolves disguised as good Christians who are attacking people and drinking their blood.
Toussaint is said by other characters to be a Bearwalker — an Indigenous shape-shifter — and his elusiveness may be his strategy to avoid such classification by those outside his culture, or perhaps proof of it. Adam spins out the theme of identity hidden under a disguise — be it human form or perhaps the clothing that covers it — into a dense and satisfying climax.
Adam originally titled this play Bearwalker but changed this after conversations with members of Indigenous communities who commented that the title could be a barrier to engagement because of its implications of dark magic. The cast offer this behind-the-scenes story as part of a prologue that also includes the land acknowledgement that is now a familiar feature of theatre performances in Toronto.
Nancy Anne Perrin’s lovely set design turns the low-ceilinged Assembly Theatre into a birch forest, and her leather and linen costumes convincingly suggest the historical period. Sound design by Alex Eddington contributes to the evocation of the natural environment.
Attempts at projections through a stretched hide screen don’t quite work because the images are hard to make out, and there was a surprising lack of stage blood for a play in which spilling blood and cleaning it up features so frequently.
While the actors do not uniformly seem to match the age of their character to sometimes distracting effect, they speak and embody their roles with impressive skill and conviction.
It’s this kind of smart and sophisticated work that keeps Toronto’s indie theatre scene vital. I look forward to the final play in this trilogy.