NAME IN VAIN (DECALOGUE TWO) by Andre Alexis, (Tarragon ExtraExtra Space, 30 Bridgman). To October 30. $15-$22. 416-531-1827. See Continuing. Rating: NN
It’s easy to forget how hard actors work, but if there’s one thing that Andre Alexis’s well-intentioned – if flat – study of the Second Commandment does emphatically, it’s to put the labour of performance front and centre. With only one line to learn, no less.
Five monks tend a field, their individuality and piety expressed in their faces and physical bearing. As time passes, we watch them live together and experience small joys and petty frustrations. Richard McMillan gazes soulfully Walter Borden’s frail, loving, monk elicits much sympathy and Dean Gilmour brings the wiry, cartoonish energy of his Theatre Smith-Gilmour work to the subdued happenings.
Still, watching them tend their crop is like watching a theatrical screensaver, and it communicates about as much.
Alexis, an eloquent novelist and essayist, has given himself the unenviable task of writing a play with only two hallowed words. In the program notes, he explains that this is as much about the elements of theatre as it is about the Decalogue. While it’s an intriguing experiment to construct theatre within such limits, the tension that builds as the scenes progress stifles rather than grips.
Kimberly Purtell’s set design only half-successfully converts an upstairs rehearsal hall into a convincing theatrical space. The long, glaringly white alley has a kind of ascetic clarity, but it too feels like a restriction the actors must work around. Alternatively, John Gzowski’s lively sound design offers some respite from the silence – sometimes jarringly so.
It’s not the absence of words that obscures this production it’s the insufficiency of the action. More often than not, Name In Vain (Decalogue Two) feels like a game of charades, the contenders stuck performing the same gestures over and over – everything, not just the name, done in vain.
