THEAT RE-

The underdog acts out of love and anger

Love and Anger, Vancouver Playhouse, directed by John Cooper, To

Feb. 1

“Petie’’ Maxwell is a man transformed. After suffering

i _n George F. Walker's play Love and Anger Peter or

a stroke which destroys part of his brain (the ‘‘business
compartment” seemingly), he moves his law practise to a
grungy basement in the low-life district and begins a quest
to purge the world of corruption.

Of course, his crusade is doom-
ed. Not only is he one small,
rumpled, balding, brain-damaged
man against the system, his days
are numbered and his adversaries
insidiously entrenched in the
soulless social machine.

Petie is a rabid ball of sincerity
who has nothing ieft but his in-
stincts to act on. He acts out his
anger at the crummy values of the
“system,’’ but he acts out of love
for his fellow downtrodden.

. Bill Dow makes a good mini-
dynamo in the role of Petie and
has the audience on side from the
beginning, although there could
be some variation in the one-track
frenzy of the character.

Petie is assisted and tolerated by
a motley crew consisting of his
frail and pernickety secretary
Eleanor Downey (played crisply
and convincingly by Sheila
Moore), her schizophrenic sister
Sarah Downey (a truly kinesthetic
performance from Corrine Koslo)
and a black. woman, Gail Jones
(Melanie-Nicholls-King).

Petie (he prefers this name
because it is tess officious than
“Peter’’) targets newspaper

~ magnate, Babe Conner, who is
known to be engaged in criminal
activity.

Conner’s thugs, it turns out, are
responsible for Gail’s husband be-
ing in jail: Petie cooks up a flimsy
case against Babe with the inten-
tion of releasing Gail's husband by

- threatening to expose Babe's crim-
inality.

If it all sounds a bit like a flaky,
’40s-style detective story it is. But it
is still very funny.

In fact, Love and Anger is more
successful as a comedy than as a

‘play about social change.

{ don’t know abcut anger being
“the first step of self-eripower-
ment,’ — now there's a phrase for
the ‘90s — as director John Coo-
per states. Petie certainly finds
satisfaction in indulging his anger
and in not conforming to the
unscruplous business/judicial

* world, but his anger amounts to a
mere peep in the clamorous war

Barbara Black
THEATRE REVIEW

for social change.

One instance of “self” em-
powerment does not a revolution
make.

Thai point aside, the play also
contains interesting commentary
on different states of madness.

in the beginning of the play we
laugh at Sarah’s rambling eccen-
tricities. But at the end of the play
her madness takes on a legitimacy
that rivals the sane but inhuman

- world of the lawyer Sean (the able

Norman Browning) and newspa-
perman Babe (Stephen E. Miller).

In the scene in which Sarah pre-
tends to be a perfectly sane lawyer
atid reasons with Petie’s ex-partner
Sean and his client Babe (who is
suing Petie for vandalizing his
newspaper boxes), we can see that
she has chosen her madness as her
most viable response to the world.

Schizophrenia aside, (or maybe
as a result of it) Sarah can sniff a
pheney out of a haystack.

Petie Maxwell and Sarah
together challenge the inhumanity

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and greed so rampant in their
world.

In a mock trial which puts the
crooked Babe on the stand, the
raving, irrational Sarah is the
judge, symbolizing the craziness of
a judicial system that rewards the
rich and punishes the poor. Not a
new idea, but funny and touching
along the way.

If this play had a subtitle it might
be ‘‘Petie the underdog takes on
the world — and loses.’’ He does,
however, retain his humanity and
inspire admiration in his fellow
human beings — at least, those
who are uncorrupted.

Pearl Bellesen’s set is reminis-
cent of the gloomy, dank interiors
of old black and white TV detec-
tive stories. :

A standard oak desk sits among
randomly stacked bank boxes, lit
overhead by fluorescent lamps. In
the background is a conveyor belt
from some former industrial use,
three high-placed grimy windows
which look onto the street (and a
regularly-pillaged dumpster) and a
large fan set in the wall. It is truly
the surroundings of the underdog.

photo David Cooper
BILL. DOW as Petie Maxwell! confrents North Shore actor Stephen

E. Miller as Babe Conner in the comedy Love and Anger at the
Vancouver Playhouse, playing to Feb. 1.

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