MODERATO CANTABILE
Factory Studio (125 Bathurst)
Rating: NNN
Aug 13 at 9:45 pm, Aug 15 at 3 pm, Aug 16 at 2:45 pm. 1-888-328-8384, summerworks.ca.
Director Cole Lewis’s adaptation of Marguerite Duras’s modernist classic has some intriguing touches, but it still feels like a work in progress.
A wealthy woman (Nicole St. Martin) takes her son (Alexander Scodellaro) to a piano lesson led by a strict teacher (Brenda Kamino). After a crime is committed in a nearby bar, she visits that bar and talks with a working-class patron (Tawiah M’Carthy). These visits continue, with sex and violence bubbling beneath the man and woman’s seemingly banal conversations.
The switching narration adds a touch of objectivity, the design elements work beautifully, and Shira Leuchter captures the right tone of quiet menace as an all-seeing bar worker.
But the central conversations between M’Carthy and St. Martin need more shape and tension.
