Photo: Electric Umbrella Images

The first incarnation of this fairytale with a difference was primarily a love story that turned into a depiction of wife abuse. The picture of the initially charming and caring suitor becoming the controller and removing his victim from familiar territory, friends and family to gain greater control by isolating her was clear.

That was the version of Matchstick presented at the Ottawa Fringe in 2013. The current expanded version shifts focus from being the fictionalized story of “the life of the wife of one of the most hated men in the world” to become steadily darker and far more direct about its historical context.

Matchstick begins as a rustic fairy story about a young girl living in “an undesirable country.” Cast out by her father and courted by assorted suitors, she is swept off her feet by a charmer from the “land of freedom and opportunity.”

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Photo. Andrew Alexander

George Walker is one of Canada’s most important, most pleasing, most talented and most versatile playwrights. He changes styles, he changes forms he has delved into all manner of writing for the stage, but his fantasies always show a predilection for veiled anger, repressed violence , grade B movies, dysfunctional families and all the stereotypical characters that populate this world. In The Burden of Self Awareness, he has taken the most stereotypical characters of his past detective style theatre- the filthy rich couple, the private eye, the psychiatrist and the call girl – stripped them of all their social and psychological veneer that they must transport with them in order to function in society. Curiously enough, Martin Conboy’s set while elegant and slick did not get that sense of double performance which is put in place, but his lighting was beautiful as always.

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