Between The Sheets - An Excruciating Play That Satisfied
Sunday, March 16, 2014
It is my feeling that Toronto’s young
playwright, Jordi Mand probably has never heard of Horace’s advice from his Ars Poetica where he instructs
poets that they should never resort to a "god from the machine" to
resolve their plots "unless a difficulty worthy a god's unraveling should
happen.” But she did take the advice.
There is no deus ex machine that can
possibly save the bleak ending of the Pi
Theatre production of Mand’s play, Between the Sheets which my granddaughter
Rebecca Stewart (16) and I witnessed in this site specific play inside a real third
grader’s classroom at the Admiral
Seymour Elementary School in the Vancouver neighbourhood of Strathcona.
Many of our city’s couch potatoes say we
live in a no-fun city. Why venture out when downloading a movie from Netflix is
so easy?
 |
| Standing left, Caitriona Murphy, centre Stephanie Moroz, right Jordi Mand |
Or we could go to see a conventional
and safe play at a major Vancouver
venue and be properly entertained without the taxing of our emotions or thought
processes.
Why would anybody leave the comfort of a
roaring fire in the den to pick up one’s granddaughter (not a happy camper at
school) to take her to a play on a bleak and gray Sunday afternoon and have her
say, “So you bring me to a school on my spring break!”
The fact is that Rebecca Stewart and I did
all the above and found Between the Sheets so excruciatingly real that we felt embarrassed
to be present during the escalation of what began as a parent/teacher meeting.
The director of Between the Sheets as well being the
Artistic Director of Pi Theatre, Richard Wolfe has his own theatrical agenda. This
agenda is to push us (Lotus Land inhabitants that we are, we need some of that) into theatre that will challenge us. Last year’s Terminus
(also a Pi Theatre production) probably caused many planning trips to Ireland to
cancel abruptly. Terminus made Dublin
seem like a hell on earth. But I would never reject Wolfe's idea that plays should be sugar-free. One needs such jolts.
Such was the delivery of this play, the
starkness of the location under unpleasant fluorescent lighting, the smell of
the linoleum floor (I asked Rebecca to check for chewing gum under the desks
but she told me that it would only happen in high school) and finally a
performance so real that it seemed effortless, that I felt that I did not
belong there. My Rebecca added later that unlike in a normal theatre you could
read the expressions on other people’s places since was sat around the
proceeding but left the centre of the classroom empty.
At one point, Caitriona Murphy (who plays
Marion, Alex’s mother, whose father and teacher Teresa Stewart, Stephanie Moroz is perhaps having a fling with) brushed past me as the whole classroom was the stage.
The dialogue at one point made me think, “This
is terrible. She is using the expression ‘trophy wife’. This play is full of clichés.” And then I thought again and saw how real all
this seemed. People do talk like that. It was not a reality show. It was a discussion between women who
in the end do meet for a few seconds and see eye-to-eye. That brief comfort
zone was then shattered with no resolution.
I feel that I was right in taking my 11
year-old granddaughter Lauren Stewart to see the excellent Arts Theatre
Production of Mary Poppins a few months ago.
I also feel that taking Rebecca to Between the
Sheets (lots of f-words and the shocking use, once[!], of the C-word, Rebecca
opened her mouth wide) was a challenging afternoon that in its own way did
entertain us, but more important it helped, perhaps diminish that chasm that
sometimes separates grandfathers from their granddaughters.
Between the Sheets is on until March 26. For info here.
Between the Sheets is on until March 26. For info here.
