I’ve never been a huge fan of self-conscious political theatre. I tend to be drawn to the stuff that dreams are made of: meaty acting roles and meaty actors are my idea of a night well spent. The University College Drama Program’s meta-theatrical production of Martin Crimp’s Attempts on Her Life—the Canadian premiere of 1990s “in-yer-face” theatre that rocked London—was daring, unique, and at times thoroughly entertaining, but failed to rise above its own conceit. Director Michelle Newman’s production is compelling and provoking, if not entirely satisfying. It examin of a simple question, “How do you describe a person?” After two hours of powerful ensemble work, the audience ought to be outraged at the displayed disconnect of life and truth, but instead are left feeling that they’ve been told something but aren’t quite sure why.
The set is striking and superbly designed. The performance takes place behind a wall of Plexiglas on a stage filled with cameras, TV screens, and cords strewn everywhere. This forced separation—a physical fourth wall between the audience and the actors—was an excellent concept by director Newman and designer John Thompson, assisted by the UCDP design class. The performers are superimposed on a mega screen that serves as the backdrop for the entire set. Technically, this transfiguration of perverted voyeurism aids the message of the show, yet also dates it. Surely we are all sufficiently familiar with basic PoMo to understand, if not necessarily appreciate, this sentiment.
Crimp’s script is open to a myriad of interpretations; in this production an ensemble of five screenwriters-cum-actors construct the life of a woman, or girl, or car, called Anne, or Anna, or Anushka. The ensemble—Thomas Davis, Yevgeniya Falkovich, Tara Gerami, Chantelle Hedden, and Alex Rubin—construct a woman, and a world, where everything is sexualized and disconnected, where the truth is entirely constructed, and we lose the powerful need to feel that the things we see are real.
Whether as an impassioned writer, a pathetically bourgeois middle class father, or channelling Mick Jagger in a dance sequence, Davis triumphed in his (all too rare) moments of earnest inquiry. Rubin, who plays by far the most perverted roles in the script, including that of child pornographer, is at times too understated, yet managed to simultaneously elicit disgust and understanding for his particular version of spectacle. Hedden and Falkovich clearly understood the show’s search for meaning, but simply could not compare to Tara Gerami, whose performance was filled with energy, sauciness, and vulnerability.
Despite the excellence of all the constituent parts, director Newman is unable to escape a “drama class” explanation of the script. The mid-show vignette about the artist who kills herself as her art, and who gives the show its name, is a powerful comment on the difficulty of artistic creation in a pluralistic world, but theatre works best when the viewer sees, hears, and feels it themselves — and doesn’t have to be told. This production, enjoyable it is, still has to explain what it means.
Attempts on Her Life runs at UC’s Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse until February 7.
