U of T’s annual Drama Festival, staged over three nights last week, offered up-and-coming student playwrights a shot at having their work staged in an artistic and competitive environment at Hart House Theatre. With companies and playwrights representing each of the university’s three campuses, the Drama Festival is truly a celebration of U of T’s vibrant and diverse theatre scene. Below are selected reviews and a complete list of the Festival Award winners.
ComMentary
By Sarah Warren
ComMentary, on one level, is a light-hearted series of conversations concerning the relationships between men and women. On another, it’s a vague attempt to censure callous (and clichéd) male behavior. Three couples have lunch at a swanky restaurant, and a waiter with the driest wit this side of a martini weaves between them, offering advice as well as entrees. Warren has an ear for the way people speak to one another, and knows how to set up a good punchline (listen up for the one about “multicultural porn”). Unfortunately, some of the dialogue feels like a string of one-liners tied loosely together. This is most apparent in the repartee between university students Mandy and Sue-funny, but a little obvious. The ensemble is uniformly strong, however, with each of the couples tapping into their respective motivations. Although the pacing was swift and all of the performers navigated through their scenes admirably, ComMentary occasionally floundered due to poor structure. For instance, Zoey and Tanner-an ex-couple who stayed “friends”-spend much of the play in hysterical one-sided discussion. We get it, Zoey-Tanner’s a fuckwit. Why are you wasting your time trying to get him to understand? Somewhere in her relentless vocalizations, I lost all empathy for her, and because the play gets stuck at the restaurant table, I had no choice but to stay there and sweat it out.
Rating: VVV
Holiday
By Alexandra Napier
Alex Napier’s Holiday is gentle and reflective, but avoids the trap of sentimentality. Napier created believable and likeable characters, and her actors were all good at sharing their vulnerability with each other. Set in Sick Kids Hospital, Holiday shifts from the present to the past, showing 18-year-old Hannah as she tries to deal with her younger sister’s death. Chris Berube is wonderful as Adam Fricke, the young doctor who forges a bond with Hannah in the hospital corridors. Fricke is able to naturally articulate the sadness embedded in all the characters, managing to find some solace in the enigmatic Hannah. The most evident issues with the production were staging problems. Set transitions were conspicuously bad-one intimate scene got trampled by the sound of stagehands thumping in the darkness. On the dramatic side, the climatic scene of Hannah’s medical crisis comes up a little flat. The scene had an innate eroticism that the actors seemed to shy away from instead of exploit. Nonetheless, Holiday was a fascinating production that packed a lot of quiet force.
Rating: VVVV
First Draft
By Colleen MacPherson
The overall design of First Draft was fantastic: costumes of simple and adaptable grey-green jumpsuits suggested proletarian uniformity, and pink scarves worn in different ways signalled the performers’ leaps from one character to another. Sarah Warren directed Chala Hunter and Thomas Davis in a performance that seized the whole theatre from the moment the duo took the stage. Rolling oversized balls, climbing ladders, piling milk crates, and even riding a bicycle, the performers literally carved up the set, their energy never flagging. Beyond its raucous shenanigans, First Draft is a play with an earnest message for the audience: open your eyes and stop living an apathetic life. Colleen MacPherson has crafted a political play founded in the tension between two people who become a multitude. The only problem is that the narrative is difficult to track: just as I began to care for the characters, they became someone or something new. Nonetheless, it was provocative, stunningly performed, and dynamically staged. It also had some powerful moments. The theatre was stone quiet when Davis sat beside Hunter and said “You have the most beautiful face.” With a moment of such perfect beauty and sadness, why rely on a Ginsberg poem later on to communicate the same thing?
Rating: VVVv
U of T Drama Festival 2007 Award Winners
• Awards of Merit:
UTSC Drama Society / Direction
Amy Mayor – Adult Toys
UTM Drama Club / Stage
Management
Jessica Seguin – Cousins Of Corsica
St. Michael’s College Drama Society / Acting
Mina James – ComMentary
Victoria College Drama Society / Acting
Chris Berube – Holiday
• IATSE Local 58 Award For Technical Achievement
UTSC Drama Society
We Can Get Them For You Wholesale
Awarded to the company
• Hart House Theatre Award For Best Performance
Tie/Ensemble
Hart House Drama Society
Chala Hunter And Thomas Davis-First Draft
• Robertson Davies Playwriting Award
Victoria College Drama Society
Alexandra Napier-Holiday
• Robert Gill Award For Best Direction
UTM Drama Club
Christopher Sironi-Me And My Asian Mother
• President’s Award For Best Production
Hart House Drama Society
Awarded to the company of First Draft
• Viewer’s Choice Awards
1st night > Heroine Addiction
2nd night > First Draft
3rd night > The Entertainer
