Matchstick. A pair of winning stage presences but the aura of spontaneity diminishes as the material progresses
Photo: Barb Gray
The first point to be made about Matchstick, GCTC’s new winter offering, is that it Nathan Howe and Lauren Holfeuer are a pair of winning stage presences.
The second is that Howe, wearing his creator’s hat, has attempted a genuinely original script — one which, in its fusion of word and often delightful music, tells the story of a young girl named Matchstick whose yearning for a better life leads to a calamitous relationship.
The third point is that the material is delivered in a visually imaginative and often enchanting production package. Director Kristen Holfeuer’s excellent collaborators include David Granger (set), Bill McDermott (lighting) and Jessica Gabriel and Chloe Ziner (projections). Particularly, in the first part of the evening, with bold and colourful fairy-tale images on a scrim and arresting puppet silhouettes that are not quite of this world, this is a show that repeatedly seduces us into its magic.
But it’s a story where the magic eventually begins to crumble and reveal something more ominous. Matchstick is an orphan girl who lives in an undesirable country. And when she meets Alik, a stranger from a better land, and falls in love with him, there’s the promise of a fairy tale coming true.
Instead, her marriage and arrival in another country start bringing darkness into her life. Alik, increasingly controlling and paranoid, is not the husband she thought he was. The final revelation, ripped from yesterday’s headlines, does deliver an undeniable jolt.
Yet, there remains something puzzling about Howe’s musical fable. Despite its many pleasures, it doesn’t quite connect. There’s vulnerability and resilience in Lauren Holfeuer’s portrayal of Matchstick — and there’s enormous charm in some of her early musical numbers with Nathan Howe, who portrays not only the doom-driven Alik but other characters in her life. This is a show in which the performers are ready to pick up their own musical instruments for a song and then minutes later accompany themselves through a number with self-created sound effects. There’s no denying the delightful spontaneity, for example, of its stomp-and-shuffle moments.
But the aura of spontaneity diminishes as the material progresses to its climax. Instead, an element of calculation casts the wrong kind of shadow over the unfolding drama.
One suspects that The Uses Of Enchantment, Bruno Bettelheim’s landmark study of fairy tales, has been an influence here — also Into The Woods, Stephen Sondheim’s provocative musical about fairy tales that can go wrong. But Matchstick, for all its positive aspects, has failed to find a convincing narrative line — neither in word nor music — to sustain its ambition. And attractive as Nathan Howe and Lauren Holfeuer may be on stage — and they do work together beautifully — they are delivering mere performances rather than secure characterizations.
This GCTC production originated with Saskatoon’s enterprising Persephone Theatre — an institution that started making its mark nearly four decades ago when it turned Shakespeare’s Othello into a country and western musical called Cruel Tears. Matchstick has its rewards, but doesn’t quite work. Yet it’s gone through various incarnations. It began as a shorter fringe piece with a quite different ending. Then it materialized as a two-act offering last year at Persephone’s home base. Now, in Ottawa, it’s back to one act without intermission. Has it been tinkered with too much?
Matchstick by Nathan Howe
A Saskatoon Persephone Theatre Production
Continues at GCTC to January 31.
Director: Kristen Holfeuer
Set: David Granger
Lighting: Bill McDermott
Projections: Jessica Gabriel and Chloe Ziner
Costumes: Lauren Holfeuer
Cast
Matchstick……………………………Lauren Holfeuer
Alik…………………………………..Nathan Howe