Engaging Evening of Stones in His Pockets But the Play’s Serious Intent is Not Quite Captured.

Dynamic duo of Gélinas and Counsil. Photo Andrew Alexander

There’s no denying that actors Richard Gélinas and Zach Counsil are an engaging double act in this new production of playwright Marie Jones’s international stage hit about the impact of a Hollywood film crew on a rural Irish community. They’re capable of working together as smoothly as a pair of fingers on the same hand, they have a deft way with comedy, and they serve the needs of the play with their ability to define a character with a few broad strokes.

That latter gift is essential here. These able performers are not just being called upon to portray the droll and jaundiced Jake Quinn (Gélinas) and the bouncily optimistic Charlie Conlon (Counsil), two locals who have been hired as extras on the film. They’re required to work much harder than that and also serve up an additional gallery of characters which include Irish labourers, neurotic filmmakers and a seductive Hollywood diva named Caroline Giovanni.

This is minimalist theatre, with the two actors alone on the Gladstone stage save for an old trunk and a long row of shoes which they periodically raid. And thanks to the knowing direction of John P. Kelly, there’s an impressive seamlessness in the way each actor can abandon his main character in a blink of an eye and assume a convincing new identity — be it an apoplectic assistant director or bullying security guard or the voluptuous Caroline.

On opening night, Zach Counsil may have faltered on occasion with lines and accent, but you were ready to forgive him his transgressions, considering the ease with which he swivelled his way comically from the sunny innocence of Charlie into the self-absorbed psyche of the narcissistic Caroline, a creature of infinite vacuousness, unfettered calculation and alarming magnetism. To be sure, such moments come closer to caricature than character — but that’s an approach which the text of the play often invites. Given what he has to work with, Counsil’s contribution, whether in the world of Caroline or elsewhere, is neatly observed.

Gélinas’s resourcefulness has no limits — whether he is mincing his way through the role of a flamboyant director or shovelling on the blarney as a conniving Irish rustic. Furthermore, when it comes to his own character, Jake, a man with a wryly amused awareness of the the absurdity of existence, we’re brought closer to the play’s more serious intent.

But not close enough. The laughs are certainly present in Kelly’s production — but where are the tears? And is the lack of a more painful emotional centre really the production’s fault?

Comedies about culture shock abound in our dramatic literature, but Stones In His Pockets sets out to be a tragi-comedy: indeed the very title relates directly to the suicide of youthful Sean Harkin whose despair and hopelessness are intended by the playwright to reflect a deeper malaise in an Ireland far removed from the lying, emerald-green romanticism being propagated for the umpteenth time by a visiting team of foreign filmmakers.

Jones obviously wants her audience to be entertained, but she also wants it to see the grim realities — economic stagnation, a disintegrating rural culture, social distress — behind the Hollywood make-believe. She has admitted that her 1996 play is fuelled by anger and she has complained about the tone of the long-running London production, perhaps the most influential production the play has received, implying that it drained away the play’s bitter undercurrent.

Yet an imbalance still exists in this Ottawa production, despite the fact that a knowledgeable Irish-born director, sensitive to the play’s inner inferno, is at the helm. The serious face of the piece remains elusive: we remain more ready to buy into the laughter than the tragedy, to embrace the amusing satire but not its cutting edge. Yes, we should care more about the issues which were consuming Jones when she wrote this play. But why can’t we? Perhaps it’s because it’s Marie Jones herself is responsible for this imbalance. Could it be that she does comedy too well for the good of the play she she really wanted to write?