Vittorio Rossi’s bittersweet play Envelope takes on filmmakers
Vittorio Rossi’s play at Centaur is by turns bitter, sweet
THE ENVELOPE March 24 to April 19 at Centaur Theatre, 453 St-François-Xavier.
Tickets: $37.50; students, $27; under age 30, $35.50. Call: 514-288-3161 Web: centaurtheatre.com
To sell out or not to sell out is the question facing the playwright protagonist in Vittorio Rossi’s latest play, The Envelope, which had its première on Thursday at Centaur Theatre. A humorous satire with a bitter, sometimes nasty edge, Rossi’s play, which he also directs, took dead aim at Canadian film producers and government bureaucrats who “make movies that no one ever sees.”
As veteran playwright Michael Moretti (a clone of Rossi), Ron Lea was a rock of integrity teetering on the edge of a cliff as his one-time student-friend-turned-movie-producer Jake (David Gow) dangled before him a multimillion-dollar contract to turn his new play into a Canadianmade movie. The envelope of the play’s title was the government’s shady, unofficial nod of the head that Jake’s project would get funded. Moretti, though, would have to make compromises that would ruin his vision.
All of the play’s six characters, including Jake, agreed that English-language Canadian films were crappy, mainly because the government bureaucrats awarding funds knew nothing about movies and Canadian producers were in it only for the upfront money, well aware that their movies would never get distributed.
Moretti had a choice to make: A U.S. producer was offering him total artistic control but far less money to turn his play into a movie. Punching his words with the straightforward, unambiguous delivery of a man confident in his artistic and personal integrity, Lea gave a strong portrayal of a playwright in pain — cynicism facing temptation does that to you. By holding out one carrot
after another to Lea’s character, Rossi kept the audience guessing as to which way he would finally turn.
Gow played the producer in the fawning, cajoling, just-signon-the-dotted-line manner of a cheap salesman. His character was not so loathsome as much as pitiable.
Two of the trio of actors in Moretti’s play had big scenes. As the firebrand actor Marcello Maldini who pleads for artistic integrity, Guido Cocomello was a picture of earnest sincerity, particularly effective in the play’s final emotional scene.
Many of the play’s best lines went to sonorous Shawn Campbell, delightful as the charmingly narcissistic actor Andrew Morgan. Asked whether his bouquet of flowers came from a secret admirer, perhaps his wife, Morgan deadpanned: “My wife is no secret — and no admirer.”
Melanie Sirois made a pleasant ingenue as the naive actress Caroline Lemay, who touchingly
tries to defend Moretti from Maldini’s attacks. But she had little to work with in a character that was largely undeveloped.
Rossi’s Italian roots have always run deeply through his works, 10 of which have been seen at the Centaur. As Franco, the owner of the Italian restaurant where the play unfolds, Tony Calabretta — deadpan droll — got the ethnic humour in lines like “I thought only Italians gave envelopes.”
Franco at one point asserted quite rightly that “there’s more to Italians than restaurants and gangsters.”
Unfortunately, Rossi’s frequent
use of ethnic humour for easy laughs did little to disprove the ethnic clichés.
Into the dramatic fabric of play and movie production negotiations, Rossi wove some threads of romance that were very thin indeed. Romantic hanky-panky among the cast is almost a given on the set of any play or movie, but the manipulative sentimentality here was as saccharine as anything in a Hollywood romantic comedy.
Hard-hitting on the one hand, sweet as sugar on the other, The Envelope left the impression of a well-baked, enjoyable piece of Italian pastry.