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Nov. 1, 2013
A face-to-face Communion
Daniel MacIvor’s play about three women searches for meaning.
TOVA G. KORNFELD
What do you get when you mix together a lesbian psychologist, a terminally ill mother and her estranged daughter? Award-winning Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor’s riveting Communion, a Ruby Slippers Theatre Production at Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre until Nov. 9.
In what the playwright calls an “homage to therapists,” this intense three-character drama is a dark but humorous exploration of motherhood, addiction, therapy, God and the meaning of life.
Ruby Slippers is a collective of women artists founded in 1989, with a mission to present provocative text-based theatre. This production certainly fits the bill and affirms why this small company has garnered so many local and national stage awards.
The play’s structure is three 30-minute scenes (no intermission) of face-to-face pas de deux. First, therapist/mother; second, mother/daughter; and third, it comes full circle, daughter/therapist. The common thread is the search for the meaning of life, as each of the protagonists, in her unique way, fights her demons. As the therapist says of this eternal human quest, “It’s not the darkness we fear, it’s the light behind the door. It’s not the answer we can’t hear, it’s the question we won’t ask.”
Ruby Slippers artistic director Diane Brown has the daunting task of playing the central character, Leda, a dying alcoholic who has not seen her 20-something daughter for years. She does not disappoint with a fast-paced and moving performance. On opening night, her barbed monologue had audience members on the edge of their seats. The pain of this woman, who faces a new and losing battle with cancer, is palpable.
Community member Kerry Sandomirsky (previously interviewed in the April 1, 2011, Independent) plays the stylish but serene therapist, Carolyn. Her role is to listen, she is merely a guide. In the first scene, Carolyn’s professional skills are evident in her interaction with Leda. In the final scene, however, Carolyn exposes her own vulnerability and lack of satisfaction with her life as she decides to leave her career. “Even therapists need therapists,” she quips. Sandomirsky makes the transition effortlessly. Pam Johnson’s costume choices are a metaphor for the unraveling of Carolyn’s life as she goes from power suit and heels to worn jeans and a plaid shirt.
Marci Nestman rounds out the talented trio with her role as Leda’s troubled daughter, Ann. Feeling that her mother has abandoned her, Ann has been searching for love and acceptance all of her life, and has clearly had a troubled youth, with a stint as a drug dealer in her teens and some jail time under her belt. She’s found some meaning through her marriage and a fundamentalist Christianity. Ann and Leda break life-altering news to each other in the second scene and express their alienation from each other and each other’s values. Again Johnson’s costumes are metaphors for the character, as Ann goes from modest and somewhat severe to rebellious and more wildly loose (yet still vulnerable) in her tête-à-tête with Carolyn following her mother’s death.
Director Roy Surette brings out the best in each of these three women. The intimacy of the theatre space works for this dialogue-heavy production. The set is minimalist: a chair, a bed, a table and doorframes illuminated in cool blue lighting.
What this play lacks in physicality, it makes up for in profundity. It is somewhat ironic that a play that is so feminine in depth and scope is written by a man but, as MacIvor said in an interview with the Edmonton Journal, he was raised in a world of women: mother, aunt, grandmother and four sisters. If communion is all about the act of sharing thoughts or feelings then this Communion is a success.
Tickets are available at 604-731-5518 or pacifictheatre.org.
Tova G. Kornfeld is a Vancouver freelancer writer and lawyer.
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