THE NUN’S VACATION by Tom Walmsley (Doghouse Riley). At Toronto Free Gallery (1277 Bloor West). To April 8. $20. 416-913-0461. See Listing. Rating: NNNN
In 2010, Doghouse Riley presented Tom Walmsley’s disturbing classic, Blood, in a rundown apartment off Dundas West.
Now they’re back with another gritty offering fresh from Walmsley’s pen, and are staging it in a slightly more theatre-like setting: the back of a converted art space near Lansdowne and Bloor.
The play centres around Brody (Glen Matthews), a middle-aged psychiatrist who unwittingly instigates a dangerous lust triangle involving his terminally ill patient (Stephen Chambers) and an old flame (Sandy Duarte) who also happens to be a nun.
At the start, Walmsley’s famously searing dialogue is replaced with erudite, chuckle-inducing banter – more Denys Arcand than David Mamet. But soon the pent-up sexual frustration explodes in all directions, leading to a climax that elicited both gasps and tears from the audience on opening night.
The Nun’s Vacation questions the relationship between actions and identities (“How many times do you have to steal before you become a thief?”) and underlines the ways sex, religion and psychology come together to form people’s expectations of themselves and others.
Director Jack Grinhaus makes good use of the naturalistic office/living room set and, with the exception of three mainly static monologues, provides plenty of explosive action, provocative blocking and razor-edged tension.
The cast is uniformly good, with Matthews standing out as funny and downright scary, and together all three make us believe in the lust and violence between every combination of characters possible.
