ETERNAL HYDRA by Anton Piatigorsky, directed by Chris Abraham, with David Ferry, Sam Malkin, Liisa Repo-Martell and Cara Ricketts. Presented by Crow’s Theatre and Factory at Factory Mainspace (125 Bathurst). Opens Thursday, January 27 and runs to February 13, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinee Sunday 2 pm. $28-$40, Sunday pwyc, some rush and stu/sr tickets. 416-504-9971. See listing.
In Anton Piatigorsky’s Eternal Hydra, Liisa Repo-Martell gets to play a trio of characters involved in truth, fiction and theft.
The theft is not your usual stealing, but rather the taking of another’s voice. And since the play is set in the world of writers and publishers, it’s a pretty serious offence.
Not only is the play richly plotted, but it has also been richly rewarded, having won a quartet of Doras two years ago at its premiere.
“Returning to a show is such a luxury, though I’ve had the fortune to do so several other times,” says Repo-Martell during a rehearsal break.
“The script is so multi-layered that I’m finding new ideas every day. That little connective tissue of thought is something you can explore when you’re working at a deep, relaxed level of comfort with a play.”
The actor has a role in each of the three interrelated stories, first as contemporary academic Vivian Ezra, who has possession of Eternal Hydra, a lost manuscript by reprobate author Gordias Carbuncle then as another scholar, Gwendolyn Jackson, who knew Carbuncle in 1930s Paris and finally as a Southern belle, Sarah Briggs, a character in one of Hydra’s chapters.
“I’d describe Vivian as an obsessive. Even though she’s extreme, and her passions for literature and Gordias lead her into questionable moral territory, I relate to her. Well, maybe not the questionable moral territory part,” she laughs.
“But she’s such a fan of great literature, including Gordias’s, and I can understand that passionate life-and-death relationship she has to art. She’s a real fan.”
Fandom, notes the performer, is one of the key themes in the play.
“It’s such a contemporary thing, though Vivian’s a fan of a 30s writer. I know so many people whose sense of themselves is expressed through identification with someone else. The situation isn’t a totally happy one, but it’s very human to identify yourself through who you like or dislike.”
The other two characters Repo-Martell plays are also fixated on a man, though Gwendolyn has a more clear-eyed view of Gordias because he’s not a figment of her imagination, as he is to Vivian.
“Each act is slightly different in style,” adds the actor. “The first is heightened, comic and bantering – it reminds me of a 40s comedy, complete with a wink. The second, based on Gordias’s diary, is more serious, while the third is epic and Brechtian.”
Those stylistic shifts echo the nature of the narrative as well as the audience’s reaction to the play’s characters.
“Anton has written the play so that each scene advances the action in a surprising way, not answering questions posed in the previous scene. That’s unsettling in a dynamic way it keeps the storytelling one step ahead of the viewer.
“I think Eternal Hydra works best, in fact, when you don’t know whose side you’re on,” smiles Repo-Martell knowingly.
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
