Written by Brett C. Leonard. Directed by Jim Gilbert. Featuring Tony Craig, Christian McKenna. Presented by Column 13 Actors Company. To Nov 29. Wed-Sat 8pm, $15 or $12 for students/seniors/underemployed, Wed PWYC. Dancemakers Centre, Bldg 58, Studio 313, Distillery District. 647-377-4903.
www.column13.org.
Column 13 Actors Company is presenting the Canadian premiere of Brett C. Leonard's Unconditional, which had its world premiere at New York's famed LAByrinth Theatre Company in February. As with its recent productions of two of Stephen Adly Guirgis' plays, the Column 13 cast gives totally committed performances working as an ensemble. In this case, however, it is the play itself that lets them down. It simply doesn't have the resonance that Guirgis' other works do.
The play deals with the intertwining of the lives of nine New Yorkers: five male, four female; four white, five non-white. Leonard, a white playwright, purports to show how racial fear and hatred still motivate Americans' actions in the present day. He also seeks to expose the essential isolation of individuals despite the advent of technology that supposedly brings people closer together. With its violence, simulated sex and coarse language, the play is, on the surface, realistically gritty.
Take a closer look, however, and you see that it is built on artifice. In Leonard's slice of life no couples are happily married and all seek partners outside their own race. The play's two murders aren't really plausible given the psychology Leonard has given their perpetrators. His depiction of the mutual attraction/repulsion of blacks and whites seems to come straight from Eldridge Cleaver's fourth chapter of Soul on Ice (1968) rather than from observation of New York in 2008. Indeed, the results of the recent US election suggest that Cleaver's paradigm built on envy and fear has shifted.
Unconditional, built of numerous short scenes, needs a brisker flow than first-time director Jim Gilbert provides. There may be many scenes but they take place in a small number of locations. In a space as large as Studio 313, all locations could be present simultaneously, with Alaina Perttula's lighting to signal shifts among them. One bed could stand for all beds needed, one table for all tables, without wasting time lugging furniture about. Nevertheless, Leonard's play provides choice roles, particularly for Tony Craig, powerful as a faithful employee sacked just before he can collect retirement pay, and Christian McKenna as a slimy criminal shot through with both cynicism and sentimentality. The rest of the cast all create clearly etched portraits, but the contrivance of the story mitigates their impact.