Ottawa Fringe 2014: Oceans Apart

Alain Chauvin becomes Cpl Patrick McLachlan just returning home to his parents’ house after 8 months spent  in the horror of a mission in Kandahar. The first moments of the evening show clearly that this writer is trying to capture the effects of post traumatic stress disorder on this young man. And there are excellent moments when we see how his everyday life is interrupted by hallucinations that send him back to the war zone, set off by some simple event around him home in Canada. He then leaves his home, buys a car and begins a cross-Canada ride alone to get Afghanistan and the war out of his system. That is when the play falls apart and loses focus.

This fascinating attempt to delve into the way pts eats its way into the psyche of an individual was hijacked by the character’s  reactions to Canada as he crosses the country, experiencing various meetings – real and imaginary – with his friend Joe who is wounded in the war and has to undergo surgery. Then there are his adventures in Toronto, in Saskatoon, and right out to the west coast. The central question of his own wounded psyche is abandoned. And yet the  basic subject of this show is all about what is happening inside Patrick’s head as a result of the war…which is what makes it so difficult to turn into a performance. Quite obviously the writer/actor  had no idea how an actor could express this kind of trauma, nor was the writer  able to sustain that idea in the scenario and so he turned it into a sort of road show where the  pts dissolved into clichés, giving us the sense that none of this was due to any first hand experience. Thus this appeared to be essentially a verbatim piece, based on what others described to the writer, or perhaps even what the writer imagined from newspaper reports??  The dilemma then became what textual choices to make when putting this together so that it captured something authentic.  Given this performance however, something did not mesh and one had the distinct sense that this  team took on an almost impossible task with a subject that was way  beyond its comprehension.

Oceans Apart plays in Arts Court Theatre.

Oceans Apart presented by Take a Jump in it Theatre

Written by Alain G. Chauvin

Dramaturgy by Catherine Ballachey

Cast.

Alain G. Chauvin as Patrick

Daniel Groleau Landry as Joe

Rebecca Laviolette as Carol