Conservatives, a good friend of mine constantly reminds me, come in two forms: those who vote that way, and those who don’t vote at all. Apathy (or, perhaps, solipsism) is the best sort of Tory fuel; it costs nothing to procure, and is available in increasingly depressing abundance.

Acclaimed local playwright Dave Carley describes his new work Conservatives in Love — which premiered to sold-out audiences and critical raves at Fringe 2007, and is now part of the festival’s inaugural Next Stage program at Factory this week — as “a sex farce with a political subtext.” It’s a hoot alright, its characters madly racing around trying to convince others to fuck them or to, well, fuck off. And though it takes place mainly at a gathering of young conservatives in a venue clearly meant to evoke the Art Gallery of Ontario’s Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, most of its characters are, technically at least, completely indifferent towards any political affiliation.

“In the true-confessions department,” says Carley, who dallied at length with law before pursuing theatre, “I was a young liberal. I realized even then that these young conservatives and young liberals and probably young NDP groups don’t have anything to do with politics, or at any rate very little. It’s mostly just a way of people getting together. That felt like a situation that was ripe for satire, for having fun with.”

Carley also found inspiration in a scenario he read about almost 10 years ago in a Toronto Star letter to the editor, which acts as the catalyst for Conservatives in Love’s plot. A woman had fallen against a stranger on the subway, left lipstick on his collar, and was so worried he’d be accused by his wife or partner of having an affair that she wrote the newspaper. It’s sex-farce gold (so utterly French), and provides Carley with a great thematic entrée. In his imagining of the scenario, a woman’s willingness to trace, and to try to repair, a frivolous act leads her right to the centre of a political game: a reception commemorating a hefty donation to the AGO by a software mogul, presided over by the Minister of Culture, who may in fact be the Minister of Canadian Heritage, and whose name no one seems to know.

“A lot of my pet peeves are here,” says Carley. “One of them is, of course, the tendency now to justify arts funding and the very existence of art by its economic value. The biggest culprits are actually the funding bodies themselves, who are always very proud to announce that, by patronizing whatever, they’ve injected x-amount of millions into the economy. Gone out the window seems any attempt to justify art for what it is: art.

“There’s also our new build-bigger mentality,” he says. “We’re busy with all these amazing new facilities, half of which seem to be devoted to receptions and fancy restaurants and not to the actual artistic purpose of the institution. The ROM is obviously the biggest example of that. In many senses I think the crystal is just about getting a great restaurant and a few really glitzy reception areas.” Accordingly, a character in Conservatives in Love describes the AGO as “the one that’s always under construction”; another notes that the gallery “built a helipad for its patrons.”

A principal idea in the play is, then, pretence and its uncovering — which, again, perfectly suits the genre of sex farce. Many of Carley’s characters have agendas that are exposed (one character is literally exposed — as in half-naked — for most of the play); two main female characters are, as the aforementioned lipstick intrigue might suggest, cosmetics salespeople. This idea is given additional credence through Carley and director Sue Miner’s staging strategy: only four actors — Marie Beath Badian, Jason Jazrawy, Richard Lee and Anne Page  — assume a total of 10 roles, adding to the madcap, deliberately performative feel of it all. (Instead of having characters running in and out of doors, as they would in a classic sex farce, Carley has them running around a statue.)

Carley points out that, inside his play and out, it’s not just the conservatives who have hidden agendas. One character is a covert lefty, interested in subterfuge merely for the sake of projecting and/or protecting his existential dithering (he’s a blogger, natch). In Carley’s words, “he doesn’t seem to be able to put forth too much of what he really wants.”

And so Conservatives in Love is a send-up of both sides of the spectrum — a lighthearted critique of how, in politics as well as in romance, no one is quite willing to cut to the chase, even though their actions can speak with a deafening stridency.

“Downtown has changed,” says Carley. “It’s a more selfish place, that’s for sure.” We discuss how blithe consumerism appears to have become the prevalent antidote to leftism. The latter may have righteousness on its side, but the former lays bogus claim to a kind of hip rebellion: just try and stop me from being stupid. Apoliticism, it seems, is the new smoking. “I’m more and more astonished as to how often and how blatantly that’s expressed,” accedes Carley, with a laugh. “There’s just no shame anymore!”

Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1