One man explores life, death and in between
Who Killed Spalding Gray? 1/2 (out of 4) Written and performed by Daniel MacIvor. Directed by Daniel Brooks. Until Dec. 11 at the Berkeley Street Theatre, 26 Berkeley St. CanadianStage.com or 416-368-3110
Who Killed Spalding Gray? begins with three questions from the performer and writer, Daniel MacIvor, to a random audience member who has joined him onstage. They are: Who are you? Who am I? And who is Spalding Gray?
At the performance reviewed, the interviewee thought MacIvor was the Spalding Gray of the title. MacIvor laughed, mumbled, stopped and started, “Ha ha . . . Well I can see . . . No, I’m . . . But kind of.”
From the get-go, Who Killed Spalding Gray? inhabits the in-between: between truth and fiction, between life and death, between identities.
MacIvor obviously isn’t the American monologist Spalding Gray but, as he goes on to explain, they share many professional and personal similarities, so, in some ways, he is.
In tribute to the man known for monologues such as Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box, there’s also an in-between in performance practices: MacIvor, the veteran Canadian playwright and actor, mixes his own solo style (standing and moving, switching between voices and characters) with Gray’s signature seated behind a table with a microphone and a glass of water, even drawing on Gray’s Interviewing the Audience performance, which MacIvor admits is not where he’s most comfortable.
You could even question whether or not Who Killed Spalding Gray? is entirely a solo performance. MacIvor is the only physical being onstage, except for that (un)lucky audience member. But an empty chair on the edge of designer Kimberly Purtell’s square of light suggests the constant presence of another unseen performer.
Gray’s suicide on Jan. 11, 2004, the event that spawned this production, also happened in an in-between space: in the East River, separating Manhattan from Staten Island, after Gray presumably jumped from the Staten Island Ferry.
There seems to be only one strong, clear divide in all of the imagery MacIvor creates in Who Killed Spalding Gray? in which he tells the supposedly true story of seeing a “psychic surgeon” in California to remove a malicious “entity” from his body the same weekend Spalding ended his life.
It’s interwoven with the fictional story of a man named Howard whose orchestration of his own suicide-byhitman goes awry.
It’s the divide between water and air. And after 80 minutes that blend mythology, dreamlike images, the movie Big Fish, the music of the Talking Heads and MacIvor’s own propensity for looking for signs from the universe and “significance where (he) can find it,” there’s a moment of breakthrough and clarity, which is well earned and a beautiful (literal) breath of fresh air.
“You can’t be a liar if you’re a storyteller,” MacIvor says at one point (he’s playing Big Fish actress and expartner of Tim Burton Helena Bonham Carter at the time), which is apparently the moral of Big Fish, the last film Gray ever saw.
The final lines in the film are also significant: “A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. In that way, he becomes immortal.”
Who Killed Spalding Gray? posits that, in a sense, MacIvor’s decision to rid himself of his entity had a chain reaction and led to Gray killing himself.
In another sense, the immortalized version of Gray the storyteller killed Gray the human being.
The show is an exploration of why people tell stories and what can happen if you get lost in your own selfmythology. But MacIvor’s sense of humour, which mixes his belief in spirituality and fate with self-depre- cation and skepticism, adds an undeniable sense of hope, relief and playfulness to a show about depression and suicide.
It’s never clear whether MacIvor truly thinks he had an entity attached to his body, driving him to self-destruction and substance abuse, but we feel thankful he went through the process of removing it. You know, just in case.
Because the self-awareness and humour with which MacIvor can now address this period in his life suggests a perspective that’s clear and healthy, and can perhaps provide some release for him as well as his deceased theatrical colleague.