Anita Majumdar’s Double Bill a the GCTC: One good, one not-so-good.

For the Ottawa Citizen.

Photo, Andrew Alexander. Featuring  Anita Majumdar.

Life by its nature is a fraught affair. Try living it as a female Indo-Canadian teenager at predominantly white Port Moody Senior Secondary in British Columbia.

That’s the setting for Anita Majumdar’s Fish Eyes and Boys with Cars, the simultaneously wonderful and disappointing double bill at the Great Canadian Theatre Company.

Majumdar wrote, choreographed and performs both shows. She blends exquisite Indian dance and acting that’s riveting in Fish Eyes but less so in Boys with Cars with issues ranging from teenaged (and, by extension, human) angst to patriarchy and cultural appropriation.

Fish Eyes, which Majumdar has been performing for a decade, finds 17-year old Meena despairing that “everyone’s living the dream” – as in making out and drinking beer – while she’s preparing to participate in an Indian dance festival.

Pouting and flouncing as only a teen can when she’s bemoaning her life and transformed into a breathtaking study in grace and strength when she dances, Meena is a richly realized portrait of a young woman who hungers to fit into western, white society but doesn’t while simultaneously disparaging and honouring her heritage.

We also meet Aunty, a name traditionally assigned to any older, unrelated woman, who teaches traditional Indian dance in her basement. In Meena’s eyes, she’s the scourge determined to separate the teen from her dreams of a summer romance with Buddy, a hunky doofus.

Demanding, warm and very funny in a playing-with-stereotypes way, Aunty too is a textured character whose every appearance we welcome.

The two tussle and test each other, and by the end of the show Meena has arrived at an uneasy peace with herself.

Majumdar, resplendent in traditional dress (costumes by Jackie Chau) and spotlighted by Rebecca Picherack’s evocative lighting design, weaves dance throughout the show to music by sound designer Christopher Stanton (the trio designed both shows). Majumdar signals the transition from Meena to Aunty with dance moves, and the entire show blends freshness with the fluidity of a thoroughly practiced piece.

Boys with Cars, making its world premiere at GCTC, has among its multiple flaws little fluidity.

The story focuses on Naz, also an Indo-Canadian at PMSS and a traditional dancer. Naz, however, is a deeply wounded victim of life and the cross-cultural wars surging inside her. Jaded, she dances for money at white weddings and other celebrations, detesting every minute of it and pretty much everything about her hometown: “This Greek tragedy called Port Moody,” she says at one point.

She has an aunty too, although this one is even more bitter than Naz and reveals that she was the author of a horrific act.

Also on the scene: an odious gym teacher who believes that “rape is a two-way street” and others some of whom were only referenced in Fish Eyes. The latter include the Buddy, who foists destructive ugliness on Naz, and Lucky, Naz’s useless boyfriend.

These characters and their relationships hang together poorly, as though Majumdar was trying to cram too much into a limited vessel. Buddy and some others are more caricature than character, and while that may underscore their lack of deep connection with Naz it does nothing to make them or their parts in the story credible.

More importantly, the position of anger and isolation that Naz (and, one suspect, Majumdar) operates from in this story is so intense that it shuts out rather than welcoming the audience into the narrative and emotions. Director Brian Quirt should have spotted that and other problems including the confusing ending.

This GCTC presentation is just the beginning for Boys with Cars, part of a trilogy which includes another instalment called Let Me Borrow that Top. Let’s hope Majumdar works on Boys with Cars until it reaches the level of Fish Eyes.

Fish Eyes and Boys with Cars

Anita Majumdar wrote and stars in two one-woman shows at GCTC,

Andrew Alexander / Nightswimming Productions

A Nightswimming Production

At the Great Canadian Theatre Company

Reviewed Thursday

Continues until No