BOSTON MARRIAGE by David Mamet, directed by Ted Dykstra, with Rebecca Northan, Daniela Vlaskalic and Julie Orton (Le Salon Secret). At a secret location revealed when tickets are purchased. January 21-22 and 27-29 at 8 pm. $25. lesalonsecret.com. See listing.
Trust the talented Rebecca Northan to do the most outrageous professional flip.
Over the space of a month, she’s gone from a flirtatious, red-nosed clown to a conservative Victorian lesbian.
In December she took her hit show Blind Date to New York City and did turn-away business. As Mimi, she chooses a different guy in the audience every night and improvises a 90-minute first date with him.
Now she’s home performing David Mamet’s most unusual play, Boston Marriage, in which two Victorian lesbians bicker while sharing their romantic and sexual fantasies.
The production couldn’t be more intimate. Staged in an apartment as a gracious salon evening, the show has the feel of a BYOB bash.
“I realized a year or two ago that I went into theatre because I yearned for a sense of community,” explains Northan. “I want to share not just with other artists but with the audience, too.
“Think about a traditional theatre space. The audience goes in the front and the actors go in the back the two groups are strangers, never really talking to each other. The audience watches the actors give a performance and then everyone leaves the way they came.
“I want theatre to be more cohesive, more casual, with everybody mixing in a friendly house party.”
The Mamet play was suggested by writer/actor Daniela Vlaskalic (The Drowning Girls), a fellow Albertan whom Northan met in Edmonton. They’ve never worked together but have always wanted to.
In Boston Marriage they play Anna (Northan) and Claire (Vlaskalic), two “friends” who have to watch themselves in staid, turn-of-the-century Boston society. Anna’s recently taken on a male lover for the wealth he promises, while Claire’s besotted with a young woman. Each is jealous of the other’s obsession.
“The more we dig into it, the more we realize that you only find this kind of hatred between people who’ve been lovers for a long time. Why, I wonder, is it so funny when people hate each other so much?
“The women’s reactions are disproportionate to what they speak of, in large part because they have such a huge history that informs the moment. It feels like they’re a set-in-their-ways couple facing some new developments: ‘Yes, I love you, but I want to sleep with someone else. Are you all right with that?'”
Boston Marriage is Mamet’s only play for an all-female cast, but director Ted Dykstra pointed out to the cast that the women in the play speak like every Mamet character. They have strong opinions and look out for their own interests.
“You always have to work on the train of thought when you’re playing Mamet,” adds Northan. “No one gets a fully thought-out or spoken idea they’re always interrupted by someone else who cuts in, and the first speaker has to shut the second person up and finish an idea.
“Add heightened period language to that modern, broken-up series of thoughts and we sometimes feel like we’re scaling Mount Everest.
“But I love the change and the challenge. In Blind Date I had to work in improv mode, performing with a new playing partner each night. Now I have to buckle down and memorize one of Mamet’s most out-of-character scripts.”3
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
