"Toronto's enterprising One Little Goat" (New York Times), with support from Canadian Stage, is pleased to announce a workshop presentation of
PARTS TO WHOLE
a new play by Artistic Director Adam Seelig
featuring Sochi Fried & Ben Irvine
Find out more: onelittlegoat.org/partstowhole/
“Poetic Moose” | NOW Magazine | Stage Scenes | May 23, 2013 | by Jon Kaplan (Belated post)
Left to right: Jessica Salgueiro, David Christo, Ben Irvine, Lindsay Owen Pierre, Lindsey Clark. (Photo: Yuri Dojc)
Ever see a moose in a lyrical if sometimes manic mood?
You’ll find one in the Tarragon Extra Space, where One Little Goat Theatre, dedicated to presenting poetic drama, offers the English premiere of Quebec writer Claude Gauvreau’s play The Charge Of The Expormidable Moose, in Ray Ellenwood’s translation.
Absurdist, poetic and leaping wildly between madcap comedy and upsetting tragedy, the play was a flop in its original 1970 presentation. Regarded as a visionary writer, Gauvreau died in 1971, following years in a psychiatric hospital after the suicide of his muse.
That personal history most likely figures in the play, in which the central character, a poet named Mycroft Mixeudeim (Ben Irvine) lives in… a home? an asylum?… with four others (David Christo, Lindsey Clark, Lindsay Owen Pierre and Jessica Salguiero) who constantly play tricks on him. Unable to resist bashing down doors with his head to reach any woman he thinks is in distress, the naive Mycroft is regularly “called” by the planned shrieks of women, who then deny what they’ve done.
Are they four therapists trying to cure Mycroft’s sadness over the loss of his girlfriend, since they keep trying to pigeonhole him using various psychiatric labels? Or maybe they’re meddling, nasty friends who can’t resist playing with his head and repeating the cruel joke over and over? Gauvreau doesn’t say.
At the end of the first act, a helicopter pilot (Sochi Fried) crashes on the isolated property and becomes Mycroft’s main defender, though she’s not immune to being part of yet another attempt to cure him. And halfway through the second half, a sadistic man (Hume Baugh) takes over to make Mycroft’s life an even harsher hell.
The writing is shot through with passages of grandiose language, bits of nonsense and gibberish and is occasionally reminiscent of Beckett; at one point, Mycroft delivers a speech that stylistically echoes Lucky’s monologue in Waiting For Godot.Director Adam Seelig’s given a lot of thought to the demanding script in this fine production. Fried makes a sympathetic figure, and her scenes with Irvine are the most moving in the production, even when they’re discussing philosophical matters. Baugh’s black-garbed, cold figure is properly powerful, hard for the others to resist.
It’s Irvine who anchors the show with a bravura performance, whether speaking monologues to a mirror, or, when Mycroft is drugged, miming various absurdist scenarios (a camel becomes an elephant, a Turkish dancer morphs into a threshing machine, an orator changes into a grasshopper). Splendid work.
Jackie Chau contributes an inventive design, including a series of pastel doors whose handles are hands, suggestive of a surreal Cocteau film. She puts the quartet of housemates in variations on tennis whites, though the games they play are aggressive and not at all fun. In Chau’s hands, the helicopter pilot becomes a vision in leather and parachute silk.Review: (Toronto) The Charge of the Expormidable Moose | The Charlebois Post | "Gauvreau's Twisted World" | An icon of Québec-lit gets an airing in Toronto | by Beat Rice
Sochi Fried and Ben Irvine. (Photo: Yuri Dojc)
One Little Goat Theatre Company’s production of celebrated French Canadian playwright Claude Gauvreau’s play, The Charge of the Expormidable Moose, is the English premiere. Gauvreau was one of the leading artists in the group known as Les Automatistes, a movement made up of artists based in Montreal. The style is surreal and highly poetic, even when translated.
The play is a whirlwind. By the end of Act one I knew not to attempt to make too much analytical sense of what I was seeing. The four young people who live in the house are sadistic creatures who thrive off of manipulating Mycroft Mixeudeim, the fifth housemate who is a poet. It is an incredibly dark play but is set in a visually contrasting and eerie world of people in bright bold colours set in front of a multi-coloured chalkboardlike wall of doors.
Sochi Friend and Ben Irvine have great chemistry onstage.
In the first act we see a group of two young men and two young women gang up to find new ways of inflicting harm and panic on their housemate, Mycroft Mixeudeim. They sneak poisons in his food that make him lose control of his actions and laugh maniacally at his suffering. There is a point when Mycroft personifies and imitates strange things in a fit, a feat of physical theatre that actor Ben Irvine powers through. It begs us to question whether the four have succeeded in unlocking an uncontrollable manic side that all of us might be suppressing. The most disturbing thing is that for a while we also enjoy how they take the mickey out of him. Are we deep down, sadists too? One day a woman by the name of Dydrame Daduve, played by the enchanting Sochi Fried, crash lands by their residence. She is manipulated to participate in their dark masochistic games and is put to the test by another unexpected guest.
Hume Baugh appears in the second act and delivers an unforgettable performance as Letasse Cromagnon, a menace in a jacket. He is invited by Lontil-Deparey and castigates the four housemates for not being true sadists, as they attempt to justify their action as teachings for Mycroft. Sochi Fried and Ben Irvine
have great chemistry onstage. I understood everything that was going on between them, because they, as actors, clearly have an understanding. This is an extremely challenging play with some very stylized staging with actors running in and out of doors, and aggressive scenes that require precise fight choreography. Director Adam Seelig has created a solid foundation for the play. The production has just opened, and I truly believe it will grow and improve over the course of its run.
The Charge of the Expormidabe Moose run at the Tarragon
Extraspace until May 26. For tickets call 416 531 1827.
Actor Hume Baugh talks about his role as Letasse Cromagnon in The Charge of the Expormidable Moose.
Actor Jessica Salgueiro talks about her role as Marie-Jeanne Commode in The Charge of the Expormidable Moose.
Actor Lindsay Owen Pierre talks about his role as Becket-Bobo in The Charge of the Expormidable Moose.
Actor Sochi Fried talks about her role as Dydrame Daduve in The Charge of the Expormidable Moose.
Actor Ben Irvine talks about his role as Mycroft Mixeudeim in The Charge of the Expormidable Moose.
