A Beautiful View, now playing at the Tarragon Theatre, is a remount of the production last seen at Buddies in Bad Times in May 2006. The play itself is the last Daniel MacIvor wrote for his acclaimed theatre company da da kamera before he and producer Sherrie Johnson dissolved it. Given its history, it is fitting the play should be about what is and is not a relationship, and whether attempts at defining it do more harm than good.

The entire cast and creative team have returned for the remount. MacIvor directs, and lighting and sound design, integral to the play’s conception, are again masterfully realized by Kimberly Purtell and Michael Laird, respectively. In the original Caroline Gillis’ character was known only as “M” and Tracy Wright’s as “L.” Now MacIvor has become less abstract so that “M” is now “Mitch” and “L” is “Liz”. Through 80 minutes on a bare stage we see Mitch and Liz re-enact and comment upon the key moments of their 20-year relationship. They first meet by chance at an outdoor outfitters store and both lie about what they do. According to Mitch, lying is just “wishful thinking.” Although each is worried that the other may be a lesbian, after a night of drinking they drift into a sexual relationship and immediately out it. As years pass they meet intentionally and unintentionally until Liz notices that they have become “a couple.” That same evening at a Halloween party something happens that splits them apart until time brings an attempt at reconciliation.

Though the story seems terribly slight, what holds our attention is the wonderful naturalness of MacIvor’s language and his reflection of our own embarrassment at how inadequately we use words and how surreptitiously words shape our thoughts. The phrase “nothing is enough” gains in meaning with every repetition. Even in this remount, Gillis and Wright act with such an air of spontaneity you would think the show were improvised. Given his enormous attention to detail and effect, MacIvor surprisingly miscalculates the show’s ending. What was supposed to be a horrifying event drew laughter on opening night. Indeed, sudden horror hardly suits a play that limns with such humour and melancholy two individuals’ attempts to conquer aloneness.