Generous at the GCTC. Director Coates balances comic lines with the darker side of Healey’s play.
Photo: Andrew Alexander
Besieged by their eager avowals of commitment to the public weal in the federal election campaign, you might wonder what motivates politicians. Altruism? Guilt? Thirst for power?
Michael Healey’s comedy Generous, the resonant season opener at the Great Canadian Theatre Company, asks many of the same questions about not just politicians but about those who wield power in any form.
Asymmetric structure and story are one in Healey’s 2006 show. We bounce between events past and present as we watch the first acts of four apparently different plays and then, post-intermission, three concluding acts. Similarly, the lives and motivations of the characters are fractured. The plays, of course, ultimately prove to be no more unconnected than do the events of anyone’s life, which is not to say that either is a neatly completed jigsaw puzzle.
Generous – and congratulations if you spot any character wholeheartedly embodying that adjective – opens with a frantic, cartoonish scene in the prime minister’s office where we learn an overly loyal junior minister has taken to heart the PM’s words to stab a backbencher (Brian Mulroney once said of a cabinet minister, “Slit her throat”). Meanwhile, the PM’s chief of staff Eric (Drew Moore) reveals that he entered public service to do good, thereby setting up the exploration of altruism that percolates through the rest of the show.
It’s a difficult scene to pull off and it’s not entirely successful. Eric’s declaration, which should ring loudly amid the self-serving babble of his colleagues, doesn’t.
The subsequent scenes, however, do work, sometimes splendidly. They include The Death of the Alberta Report in which Julia, a power-loving oil executive played with rapacious sensuality by Marion Day, seduces a young journalist named David (Adam Pierre). The scene sets up another of the play’s themes: how the fear of death drives people like Julia to seek control, any kind of control, and how love, in this case confused with sex, has the potential to allay that fear.
Love, sex and the power dynamic continue in One Party Rule where the earnest, self-absorbed law clerk Alex (a very funny Moore) tries to make sense of his one-night stand with the icy judge Maria (Kristina Watt, the shifting expressions on her face here and post-intermission almost a play in themselves). He also wants to re-unite Maria with her estranged daughter Lily (Katie Ryerson) who shows up in Act One’s final, wordless and bizarre scene involving a nameless guy (played by Matt Cassidy, he later turns out to be named Richard), a barrel of KFC and a hapless delivery man played by Pierre.
The seemingly inchoate trajectory of Act One starts making sense post-intermission, and characters and themes deepen. Julia, for instance, decides to enter politics with a vague notion of doing good despite her assertion that “People are sort of revolting: let’s be honest.”
Alex’s relationship with Lily becomes clearer, and Maria, her cynicism and almost-extinguished hope that things could get better an apparent stand-in for Healey’s own sentiments, reveals even more of herself.
To say more would be to say too much. However, director Eric Coates manages it all with a confident hand, balancing comic lines with the darker and more thoughtful sections. The latter include the play’s exit where we’re asked to consider whether the reasons for doing something matter as long as good gets done. Clearly a question for play-goers and voters alike.
Continues until Sept. 27. Tickets: GCTC box office, 613-236-5196, gctc.ca
Published on: September 19, 2015 | Last Updated: September 19, 2015 in the Ottawa Citizen.