Push your boundaries

BAILA LAZARUS

If we were able to lift the veils from people's pasts and examine their darkest secrets – real or desired – we'd probably run into some pretty frightening stuff. Looking at some of the more violent offerings on film, from Natural Born Killers to the current Hostal, it's clear that writers and audiences are fascinated by the blackest recesses of the mind.

Into those recesses dives French playwright, director and actor Jean-Paul Wenzel in his latest work, Six Miniature Tragedies (translated from French), at Studio 58 as part of the PuSh Festival.

Wenzel directs professional actors Tom McBeath and Kerry Sandomirsky, along with the senior students of Studio 58, through six short skits that look at family, motherhood, fidelity and quite a bit of deranged behavior.

In Mado and Her Two Children, acted solo by Sandomirsky, a crazed mother attacks her two small children, raging against them for the way she perceives they have ruined her life. With spit flying from her storming mouth, Sandomirsky is the devil personified. Though the explanation for her rage might well be similar to that of other mothers who yell at their children, Sandomirsky's character is almost ridiculously demented. There's no empathy for her, just uncomfortable confusion and revulsion. This is a tough play to watch and perhaps should not have been the first one out of the starting gate.

In A Flower on the Freeway, Edith is a sexy wife feeling trapped in her marriage to a wearisome insurance salesman. She's mindlessly bored but has a child with him anyway and eventually leaves him for another man. The acting was the weakest point of this story, which contained a particularly bizarre scene in which Edith is in bed fondling her toddler in a rather erotic way. And the inclusion of a Grecian chorus made up of gossipy townspeople who fill in the story's details seems too contrived.

Salt in the Soup is a gem of a vignette featuring McBeath talking to his dead wife after she tried to poison him with salt. "A little more salt won't hurt," he mimics to his wife's inert body. There's not much of a point to this black humor but it offers great acting by McBeath as the vengeful husband who can't figure out why his wife would try to kill him.

The Butcher features McBeath again, as an ornery butcher, but the focus of the story is on his apprentice, Alain, who is dumped by his girlfriend. Shaken by this rejection of puppy love, Alain turns into Rambo, trying to prove to his girlfriend that he can be as tough as any military man and that he's "through with meat."

Love in a Tin Can examines what happens when a husband breaks the one rule of a marriage – that he's not supposed to talk. Wonderful sound effects and the accompaniment of a sole guitar work really well in this performance but there seemed to be some confusion at the end as to what exactly was in the stew the husband was supposed to be eating, as well as who's alive and who's dead.

And in Maya's Command, a teenage girl convinces one boyfriend to kill another. Again the acting is weak here and the artificial description of the murder after the fact is tedious and contrived: "You came forward.... You plunged the knife into his back.... I saw the look in your eyes...." Yes, yes, we know the performers can't actually kill a person on stage but isn't there some better way of letting the audience know what happened?

Obviously, this is not the stuff of light afternoon fare and theatre-goers should be prepared to keep their minds wide open. But most of the short stories do offer quite a bit of food for thought and seeing the fine performances of Sandomirsky and McBeath is worth sitting through some coarse language and absurdist content.

One other thing of which audience members should be aware is that all the skits run back to back for two hours without a break. Not only would an intermission have been appreciated, there was no natural pause between plays to applaud those performances that deserved it.

Six Miniature Tragedies is part of Act French, PuSh 2006's spotlight on contemporary French Theatre. It runs at Studio 58 in Langara College until Feb. 12. Tickets are $9-$20. Call the box office at 604-257-0366 or buy online at www.festival boxoffice.com.

Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer, photographer and illustrator living in Vancouver. Her work can be seen at www.orchiddesigns.net.

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