Couples explore love, betrayal
Illusions (out of four) By Ivan Viripaev, translated by Caz Liske, directed by Andrew Shaver and Paul Flicker. Until May 7 at Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Ave. Crowstheatre.com or 647-341-7390.
Theatre is always in some way about the nature of truth, because it’s make-believe. The fact that a pretend reality is presented on stage will always, at least latently, call into question what audiences accept as true in their own lives.
Theatre artists can play up such questions and incorporate them into the substance of the work — and everywhere you look on Toronto’s stages lately such metatheatrical explorations are going on, from ARC/Theatre Smash’s Kiss to Canadian Stage’s Liv Stein and Circlesnake’s Slip. This surely reflects the larger cultural crisis about trust and fake news, even if these productions were being planned before Trump was elected — artists have Spidey senses that way.
The new eastside venue Streetcar Crownest has become a particular hotbed of shows exploring the nature of truthiness, some ( True Crime) more successful than others ( Breath in Between).
The latest is Illusions by Russian writer Ivan Viripaev, presented by SideMart Theatrical Grocery in the Crowsnest’s intimate Scotiabank Community Studio.
It’s a story of two long-married couples, and about love, betrayal and credulity.
Viripaev’s script (translated by Caz Liske) is wide open for interpretation: there are no stage directions and the characters don’t have names, just First Woman, First Man and so forth.
Four performers don’t embody the characters but rather trade off on telling what happened like a story. The actors speak directly to the audience, and the others listen as if it’s some kind of party game.
The fact that the production is performed by two real-life couples adds another level of meta.
Andrew Shaver (who plays Second Man) co-directs with Paul Flicker, and their staging concept ingeniously makes a virtue out of what is apparently a small budget. The actors sit around a metallic, circular surface with three large, barrel-shaped lighting fixtures hanging low above them — when these come on, the speakers are bathed in warm, forgiving light; when the light is less direct, things get rather colder (design by Martin Sirois).
The first speech is an extended elegy to the possibility of true love and commitment: First Woman (Laurence Dauphinais) tells us about how, when 82-year-old Denny was dying, he called his wife, Sandra, to her bedside and thanked her “for teaching me about love . . . that love is not a word, not romance, but work.”
The writing and the sentiment are gorgeous, and easy to invest in as performed by the luminous Dauphinais.
She makes you just about believe in what’s being expressed . . . until she tells you what happens next, after Denny died and Sandra went to their close friend Albert to let him know some secrets she’d been keeping for the past 50 years.
Marie-Ève Perron (Second Woman) has been watching from the sidelines with intensity: with her front hair pulled up in a ponytail she gives the impression of a nervous woodland creature.
She takes the floor to tell us about Albert and Margaret, who were married for even longer than Denny and Sandra, and whose relationship, too, was not all it seemed. She uses toy figurines to enact the story, brandishing them with manic intensity and balancing them on her arm.
Another level of sly humour comes from the fact that Perron is Québécoise and speaks with a strong accent (it’s her first time performing in English), and every so often her real-life partner Shaver corrects her pronunciation.
These comic elements leaven a story that gets ever darker, sadder and more cynical.
I found myself distracted midway through trying to figure out if the performers were identified with one character or another; on reflection, I don’t think they were, and while this blocking of identification seems part of Viripaev’s project, it also keeps the audience hovering at a certain distance from what’s going on.
While they are given less meaty material than the women, Shaver and Brett Donahue create strong individual impressions, Donahue smugger and more knowing than the empathetic Shaver.
This is a brainy and entertaining piece that you’ll likely find yourself mulling over for much longer than its tight 85-minute running time.