The Secret Mask: Excellent Performances Give Much Impetus to a Script That Was Not Always Fulfilling.

 

Photo: Wayne Cuddington, Ottawa, Citizen. Paul Rainville, Michael Mancini, Kate Hurman.

At one point in the play someone asks: “Is it possible for a stroke to change a whole personality?” The question seems naïve for anyone who has dealt with the situation first hand! For playwright Rick Chafe however, the answer becomes the premise which propels his play as the author sets up his encounter between Ernie (Paul Rainville) the absent father who has suffered a seriously debilitating stroke, and his angry, stressed out son George (Michael Mancini) who hasn’t seen his father for 40 years and who needs some answers . George only comes into Ernie’s life due to the insistence of the speech therapist Mae (Kate Hurman), a warm optimistic and ever smiling person who works with Ernie, who keeps telling him how wonderful he is and how much progress he is making. She is the intermediary who opens the dialogue, who keeps the communication between the two men flowing, who brings warmth and generosity into Ernie’s life, of which we know almost nothing. At least at the beginning. The play sets about to fill in the gaps.

In spite of all these good feelings, the first movement of the play, did not quite convince me . Luckily Karyn Maccallum’s set, long panels of moving semi-transparent slats along with Jock Monro’s exquisitely shifting lighting effects , gave much depth to that controlled world of an institutionalized health facility. Sometimes transparent, opening into the world, sometimes closing around Ernie, who is too nervous at first to leave the hospital, the slats suggest a space where secret eyes and ears can observe the goings on in the private rooms next door. It is also slickly functional and becomes an apartment, a hotel, a café and various other sites.

That first act however brought out both the strength of the actors and some of the weaknesses in the script. Lights come up on Paul Rainville, sitting in a wheelchair. As Ernie, he is working with his speech therapist Mae. The actor’s body tells it all. His eyes that are “dead”, he only responds to suggestion, repeating only what he hears as Mae trys to get him to speak but at first he is incapable of any sort of initiative, verbal or otherwise. His son George sees this but the therapist doesn’t admit it. She is supposed to encourage her patient because this is of course the first step of in a process of language rehabilitation that the author has obviously well researched, with linguists, speech therapists and specialists of all sorts. He even refers to his own father who apparently went through a similar situation. However, already the author highlights the contrasts between the older man living in a world of his own, a nervous, unhappy, son not wanting to deal with this problem but pressed on by a sense of duty, and an exaggeratedly smiling therapist who starts to become irritating because her optimism appears to be repeatedly over stated.

In this environment, George actually turns into the stereotype of an abandoned son whose only interest is to learn more about this man he does not know. He keeps his emotional distance from his father, while speaking to his mother and his wife on his cell phone, trying to manage a tense situation at home. Act I also repeats the language lessons of the intrepid therapist, the eternally optimistic Royal Highness, as Ernie likes to call her. She never stops praising his progress until it runs over the top. However, more interesting, and more original from a theatrical perspective, is the emergence of a strange kind of personal language that Ernie produces because of his brain damage. That was interesting I felt, but the author did not pursue it. Fair enough but we still got a glimpse of a new world where language became a totally arbitrary system of expression (no particular logic behind the choice of words except that they constituted a new system of oral words that had to be understood by the society in contact with Ernie.) It showed us how fragile our language system is since any groups of sounds could replace the familiar words we use, as long as the new words are passed on to the people one converses with most often. ) The result was that Ernie began speaking his own language in a fairly systematic way. I could give you the list of his new vocabulary but you will pick it up if you see the play. In fact he even started teaching it to his son who was trying desperately to communicate with his father

Nevertheless, the question of a new language, which was actually fascinating, was quickly put on the back burner. That was really too bad because what was fore grounded was a series of clichés about father son relations, about fathers who abandon children, about brain injuries and about how both will eventually be transformed by this encounter. Somehow, once the shift in the focus began, we realized how the play would end and the performance lost its spark of originality.

Luckily at that point, the performance of Paul Rainville created the most exciting moments of corporeal and vocal discovery, as we see Ernie slowly emerging

out of his mental fog, and into the world around him. The result was a curious tension between the excellent performance by Rainville, the strong performance by Michael Mancini as the pressured and impatient son. Nevertheless, it was a tension based on what appeared to be a constant repetition of events that was almost so tiresome in that first act that only the performances were able to generate real interest at that point. . The excellent Kate Hurman, when her character wasn’t being irritatingly optimistic as the therapist Mae, also brought moments of relief, comic or otherwise as she slipped like a chameleon into the presence of a waitress, a bank clerk, a senior’s residence manager and several other characters. Mike Mancini was also very good at that point as the stressed out husband who was losing control of his own son (we hear all those terrible telephone conversations) and losing contact with his wife, because he has chosen to remain with this elusive father in order to understand why he left the family 40 years ago. His mixture of stress, frustration, annoyance and growing concern were all the more palpable as his character changed within this intense meeting of personalities.

And then it all changed during the second part of the play when the search for the father’s identity became the primary focus, as the mysterious “secret mask” guides their adventure into the past. The play then becomes a much more interesting investigation about the transformation of father and son through the process of recovering memory. It highlights the way time distorts and deforms memory, and how conflicting memories create tension. All this is beautifully worked out through the play’s structure as these lives crises cross in similar experiences over time.

Two situations of paternal distance, one from the past and one playing out in the present, become intertwined and even if they gave the feeling that all this was contrived, the relationship takes on more depth and more sincerity as father and son come together to unravel Ernie’s past, a process that finally works out in a most beautiful way at the end.

Without giving away any details, I found the “transformation” as it took place in the second act held my attention as the father discovers the world and retrieves his own linguistic logic. Chafe also sets up two parallel family challenges, one from the past , the other at the present and they shed light on George’s situation, helping him to understand his own father. There was a lot more for the audience to ponder.

In that second act, Paul Rainville turned in one of his habitually masterful performances. Playing out that transformational encounter with a long lost son, became a form of excentric therapy. Rainville was delightful, funny, touching and emotionally satisfying. The discoveries made by the son have just as much impact on the young man as they change the image he has of himself and of that self centered old fellow whom he remembered as a father and whom he hated for what that man did to his mother. However, George’s hate dissolves, his mistrust of Ernie evaporates, a new father/son relationship is born and Ernie’s new pathology based language drifts more towards a standard form of English which was actually a shame. His disjunctive speech was much more poetic!

Ann Hodges sensitive direction of actors was extremely well done, Marc Desormeaux’ music was too sentimental for my taste and Michael Mancini’s interpretation of George evolved into a strong performance. As for the play, it was a well-orchestrated ensemble piece that was nevertheless, dominated by a mischievous, palpitating Paul Rainville who was completely in his element.

The Secret Mask plays at the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre until September 30, 2012. Call the Box Office at 613-236-5196 for tickets and information.

The Secret Mask,

A Production of the Great Canadian Theatre Company

By Rick Chafe

Directed by Ann Hodges

Set and Costumes by Karyn Mccallum

Lighting design by Jock Munro

Composer and sound design by Marc Désormeaux

Cast

Mae and various others Kate Hurman

George Michael Mancinin

Ernie Paul Rainville