Ripcord : disturbingly outrageous popular theatre where comedy and tragedy intersect.

Ripcord : disturbingly outrageous popular theatre where comedy and tragedy intersect.

Photo Maria Vartanova
Ripcord with Sharron McGuirl and Jane Morris

 

 

David Lindsay-Abaire in his earlier works, was a  master of television style sit-coms  and Ripcord immediately sets us on this track.    A clear-cut situation with  types who obey the personality  clues that the author sends our way right from the  beginning when  director Riley Stewart’s  lively  music captures our imagination as we picture two women of a certain age dancing gayly to a sprightly Latin American rhythm.   Needless to say,  the music immediately creates an uneasy opposition between   Andréa Vecsei’s beautiful pastel coloured warm looking room in  a seniors’ home where all seems to be snugly comfortable and loveable, and the viscious  tension burning   between the two principles of the show.

We are in the midst of a serious face- off between  Abby and Marilyn who  share a room in the  Bristol Place Senior Living Facility in Suburban New Jersey. Misanthropic, morose, gloomy and cynical Abby minus the New Jersey accent  ( played by  Jane Morris who slides into her role with uncanny realism)  is  constantly steeped in the books she reads on her  I pad apparently  oblivious to the world around her.   She wants to be alone, she hates noise and she  cant stand the presence of the happy, talkative, and fun-loving Marilyn ( Sharron McGuirl ) who bursts into a room like an explosion of fireworks covered in flashy material and blinding  colours. Costume designer Peggy Laverty quite outdid herself with this one.

These conflicting behaviours are interrupted from time to time by the good natured Scotty (Max Thibault) who tries   to arbitrate the complaints in the Home and whose performance, at first rather stiff, becomes more relaxed and playful as his character captures the spirit of events.

Act I  is a sequence of  light hearted banter peppered with  sudden comic insults that don’t seem to annoy  Marilyn but that truly incite Abby to more cruel responses  because she just wants her roommate to “shut up”!  For her part,   Marilyn digs in her heels and refuses to leave their shared space, responding to her own slightly sadistic streak that has her taunting Abby non-stop. Who will get the better of whom? That is the question.

Thus   things escalate to  an unbearable point after their visit  to that  haunted  house clown performance which was supposed to transform us, by introducing us into a new theatrical world but the staging of that moment fell terribly flat.  The lighting  did not do justice to those masked creatures and  strange shapes that crept around in the background  suddenly pouncing   into view. A rather lackluster treatment of moments that could have been much stronger theatrical statements dealing with such  a scary Hallowe’en event. However that scary moment  triggers the pact between the two occupants of the room and carries the play forward.

IF  Abby can manage a seriously angry reaction from  the jovial   Marilyn,  Marilyn will have to get out and Abby will get  what she wants: an empty room.  But If  Marilyn can frighten the apparently frozen-faced  Abby , Marilyn’s prize will be   Abby’s coveted bed by the window with the beautiful view over the garden.

Clearly  it is a cruel pact leading to a no-win situation  because one of them will  eventually  be punished by losing what she loves,,The rest of the play is therefore  a competition  ‘to the death” of sorts.  It gets  nastier and nastier as each woman driving  her behaviour to the limit, forces  her rival into difficult   choices that push  events to the  limit of plausibility.

Curiously however, the play becomes more and more attractive  as the nastiness  heats up and one finds oneself caught up in these dangerous exchanges leading one to question this  portrait of older women shown as a pair of  ridiculous ladies  not able to control their emotions.  We just have to assume that the playwright betrays  the thinking of a faraway time frame especially since he is quoted in the programme stating that  there are  “few  well-written female characters”  which certainly puts him way back in another time frame, perhaps  responding to  forgotten TV hits of the past  which we wont bother to mention.

The evening however works in various ways that are mostly  successful. The performances of Jane Morris (Abby) and Sharron McGuirl (Marilyn) are impeccable and a great pleasure to watch.  As for the play, although Act I sets out all the traps and references  that supposedly  prepare the audience for what is about to happen,   the playwright drowns the characters in repetition and nervewracking chatter that  quickly  become tiring. We do actually sympathise with Abby a that point.

The second part of the evening  is much more exciting because  it removes us immediately from our daily reality and sets us off on an adventure  that begins like a joke but then takes us far outside the box. The  structure of the stage events tightens, triggering the emotional charge of it all as new protagonists appear and suddenly bring about stunning changes.  The battle begins  as events take on an unbelievable  twist trying to force the opponents into situations  which shock the onlookers , setting the candidates into  impending danger that grows even greater as the surprises never stop.   Unexpected events take our breath away including visual effects that would seem to be straight out of   Television but that still worked on stage, creating a sense of animated cartoons that was great fun.

The good thing is that clearly, the  author does  his best to titillate us with an uncomfortable sense of wanting  to laugh, but also with feelings of guilt and  of  repressed anger towards the   theatrical mastermind who was able to set us up in such an expert way while not allowing anyone to get hurt!  .Especially given his  polished conclusion that included a slight dose of predictability so as not to upset the most sensitive members of the audience.  This is a strange comedy that wants to avoid unpleasantness and with the collaboration of a director who seems to share the author’s  special talents and unusual  sense of humour, it succeeds !!

Ripcord plays a the Ottawa Little Theatre from January  9 to 26

Written by  David Lindsay-Abaire

Directed by  Riley Stewart

Set design: Andréa Vecsei

Lighting design: Larry Davies

Original score and sound design:Riley Stewart

Costumes: Peggy Laverty

The cast includes:

Jane Morris  as Abby

Max Thibault as Scotty

Sharron McGuirl as Marilyn

And many more: Stavros Sakiadis, Shirley Manh, Solly Balbaa, Robin Carter, Fay Campbell, Boyd Drake, Fran Johnson

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