‘THEATRE

Encore presentations
Fringe favorites add performances

don’t despair, there are “reruns,”” better known as

Te FRINGE frenzy is over. But if you missed it all

Pick of the Fringe, at Vancouver East Cultural Centre

and Firehali Arts Centre.

A Doll’s House, Angry Ac-
tor’s Co-op, VECC, Sept. 21,
9:30 p.m.; Sept. 23 & 24, 8

p.m.
“A Doll’s House” seemed to be
a Fringe success even before it
opened. And during the Fringe,
tickets were invariably sold out.

tmagine, Ibsen a sell-out in the
1990s.

The cast has been wittled down
to five and the play down to one
act with no serious damage to the
plot, except that it is all the more
intense.

The play is about housewife
Nora Heimer, whose uncondi-
tional devotion to her husband
Torvald has catastrophic results.
Despite changes in the relations

een men and women since
the 1880s, the play is stil] hard-
hitting for today’s audiences.

Suzanne Ristic initially plays
Nora at a too-hysteric pitch. But
she later balances the character
with a childlike tenderness and
shrewdness. In the end, her por-
trayal of Nora is very moving.

Jay Brazeau seems an unlikely
Torvald, with his sloping posture
and explosive gestures, His Tor-
vald is sort of quirky, but a
fascinating character study and
also convincing, never stuffy.

Rounding out the cast are Craig
Davidson, Thomas Hunt and
Nicole Robert.

The Helmer’s marriage, first a
seemingly happy union in which
Torvald patronizes Nora in return
for her self-effacing devotion,
mutates into something ugly and
sickly interdependent. What

always existed under the veneer of

cheery matrimony rises to the sur-

§ e p t ie

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September 21
from 11-4 at -
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Broadway)
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Barbara Black
THEATRE REVIEW

face with serious consequences
when Nora’s ‘‘crime”’ is reveal-
ed to her husband.

it’s no wonder this play isa
classic. It is so beautifully crafted

with its suspenseful build-up to the

exposed secret and its astute
observance of human frailty.

In the scene in which Torvald
discovers Nora’s debt, Brazeau’s
acting makes the sxin bristle with

revulsion. Torvald’s self-serving at-

titude and disdain transforms him
from a respectable banker (as we
saw him through Nora’s eyes) to a
callous career man. And his se-
cond about-face sets up our sym-
pathies for Nora’s outrage and
later departure.

The fast scene in which Nora
confronts Torvald with newfound
strength and dignity is very com-
pelling, with great acting from
both Brazeau and Ristic.

When the play ended,
there was a moment of silence.
fcecream, Duck Tape Players,
VECC, Sept. 19, 9:30 p.m.

t didn’t think this show was
brilliant, but certainly thought-
provoking and non-standard in its
presentation of ideas, with a fine

Us
Our
Bri
Or

Vegetables

est
PHL!St wnitenens
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cast.

The play unfolds through a
series of short scenes played on an
almost bare stage, with a slide im-
age projected onto the set each
time.

The quintessential
“Amuricans” set out for England
to research the family tree. But
their expectations of a wonderful
holiday, combined with pre-
conceived ideas about Brits, result
in a sobering experience. Their
distant relatives, two lag-about
punks, turn out to be manipulative
sociopaths who nonetheiess jolt
them out of their naivety.

Playwright Cary! Churchill has
fun with the faux-culture of the
Americans: their fanatic
evangelism, penchant for televi-
sion and squeaty-clean
Disneyland outlook. While the
Americans are under the impres-
sion their fate is happily ordered
(even if its means they know just
when the world will end!), the
spectre of chaos, so familiar to
American TV, looms close by.

The American couple want
ancestors, but somehow these
ancestors reveal a branch of the
family tree they'd rather cut off: a
primeval dark side. ~

Even escaping back home can-
not free them from the anti-social
forces they witness and even par-
ticipate in in England.

The notion of taboos is explored
— extramarital and incestua! sex,
murder and homosexuality — but
only explored in this loose, almost
pastiche format which relies on
the audience to piece together the
play’s strands.

What rose to the surface for me
was the contrasting attitudes of the
Brits and Americans toward ran-
dom fate. While the Brits courted
it rather recklessly, the Americans
glossed over it, with disastrous
results for both.

1 , 9 1

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Wednesday, September 18, 1991 ~ North Shore News - 33

pre er |
|

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North Shore News, July 17, °91

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