THEATRE REVIEW
True Crime is dark, twisty
A4
No doubt about it: Torquil Campbell, frontman of Montreal indie band Stars, is a real charmer. In his one-man show True Crime, which plays at Centaur Theatre through Jan. 27, he proves himself a resourceful mimic, disarms the audience with self-deprecating introspection, and weaves a tale that keeps you hanging on his every word. By the end of it, though, these seem less like enviable qualities than part of the armoury of a man with suspect motives. For the story he is telling is of another real charmer: a sociopathic, shape-shifting grifter responsible for at least one murder. Christian Gerhartsreiter (a.k.a. Clark Rockefeller, a.k.a. Christopher Chichester, a.k.a. lots of other names) came to the United States from Bavaria in 1978 and immediately set about wriggling himself into the very best society. He variously passed himself off as a Wall Street broker, a ship’s captain, a television director and scion of one of the world’s most famous moneyed families. He’s serving a prison term of 27 years to life, for first-degree murder. Gerhartsreiter’s story would be fascinating enough, as indeed it is in Campbell’s sometimes breathlessly excitable retelling. What makes True Crime truly special, though, is its layering of autobiographical elements, nuts-and-bolts details of the show’s creation, and a constant questioning of what the hell Campbell’s doing by letting himself be drawn into Gerhartsreiter’s baleful orbit. Director and co-creator Chris Abraham has worked on similarly self-reflexive docudramas, both with his own company Crow’s Theatre (which is presenting this show with the Castleton Massive), and with Porte Parole in shows like Seeds and The Watershed. Abraham himself gets the mimicking treatment as Campbell recalls confiding in him, wondering what he’d got himself into once the Ontario Arts Council grant cleared and the moral jitters set in. Campbell also mimics, among others, his own wife and father (respectively, actors Moya O’Connell and Stratford veteran Douglas Campbell) and, of course, Gerhartsreiter himself, with his bizarrely camp mannerisms, dominated by a habit of snapping his head back, the better to observe his intended marks dispassionately, while flattering them with lavish attention. Campbell also talks compellingly about his lifelong obsession with the “romance” and seductive transgressiveness of crime, whether in TV shows such as Unsolved Mysteries or in Patricia Highsmith novels such as The Talented Mr. Ripley and Strangers on a Train. Highsmith’s fondness for doppelgänger narratives comes through here, with Campbell’s and Gerhartsreiter’s physical similarity being the most obvious example. Campbell’s biggest whopper might be that he and Gerhartsreiter collaborated on one of the powerful new songs he performs, along with accompanying musician Julian Brown. Did he even, as he claims, visit Gerhartsreiter several times at Ironwood State Prison in California? Whatever the truth, this is a dark and twisty, funny and fascinating show. That, at least, you can take to the bank. Another compelling one-person show playing at Centaur is Madonnanera’s Body So Fluorescent, which sees Amanda Cordner evoking a disastrous night at the disco where queer self-assertion clashes with racial stereotyping in a dynamic dance of shifting identities. It plays Wednesday and Saturday at 9 p.m. and Friday at 7 p.m. as part of the Wildside Festival. Also presented by Wildside is Sex T-Rex’s Crime After Crime (After Crime), an unapologetically silly spoof on three decades of crime films, which has some incredibly slick physical comedy but outstays its welcome for such a breezy formula (Tuesday 9 p.m., Wednesday 7 p.m.). The films of David Lynch are evoked in Daughter Product’s moody performance art piece The Gentle Art of Punishment, which only really escapes from ponderousness when the three performers wittily riff on sexual fantasies (Saturday and Sunday at 7 p.m.). Cat Kidd’s animalistic poetry performance Hyena Subpoena (which I haven’t caught yet) plays Tuesday and Thursday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Unfortunately, it’s too late to see the stunningly good object theatre piece Macbeth Muet from La Fille du Laitier, but another first-rate object theatre piece, from Scapegoat Carnivale, takes up residence at Wildside this week. Sapientia, based on a medieval tale of torture and martyrdom, plays Thursday and Friday at 9 p.m. and Saturday at 3 p.m.
AT A GLANCE
The Wildside Festival continues through Sunday at Centaur Theatre. Tickets for each show cost $16; students, under 30 and seniors $13. Four-show superpass costs $50; students, under 30 and seniors $40. Call 514-288-3161 or visit centaurtheatre.com.