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Culture Theatre

Preview: The River

THE RIVER by Jez Butterworth, directed by Ted Dykstra, with David Ferry, Dani Kind and Jane Spidell. Presented by Coal Mine (982 Danforth). Previews from Sunday (November 1), opens Tuesday (November 3) and runs to November 22, Tuesday-Sunday 7:30 pm. $35, previews $20. brownpapertickets.com.

Good thing that actor David Ferry can gut, skin and bone a fish with ease.

He has to do it every night, in close proximity to the audience, in Jez Butterworth’s The River, the opening production of Coal Mine Theatre’s second season.

(Note that for this show, the company’s venue is 982 Danforth, further east than their usual space.)

Ferry plays a character known simply as The Man, an ardent fly-fisherman who enjoys female companionship at his cabin in the woods. Over the course of the show, we meet two women, played by Jane Spidell and Dani Kind.

Or are there two? That’s part of the mystery of the show, which one reviewer has likened to a Gothic thriller.

“The River is in some ways similar to another of Butterworth’s scripts, Jerusalem, which is also set in Britain’s West Country,” says the actor, a fine director (most recently of Blackbird, The Postman and Stuff Happens) as well as a talented actor.

“Like in that other piece, which is larger in scale, the playwright touches on mystical elements of English folklore such as the Green Man and wood sprites. The suggestion of ghosts and spirits is part of this play, which I think is experimental in the way it plays with time and the challenge of relationships.”

Ferry describes his character as “a good man who is haunted and represses a lot of hurt. I think he has abandonment issues that stem back to his mother, but he’s worked his way through most of them and is potentially a pretty good catch as a partner.

“He’s a romantic, and deals with a pair of extraordinary women who are really smart and yet vulnerable.”

What he’s seeking at the core of The Man is a sense of why the two are attracted to him.

“It has to make sense that they fall for him, why women he’s recently met would come to his fishing cottage in the middle of nowhere without knowing much about him. We each have different views of our characters’ backstories.”

The nature of love is key to the story, as each of the three tries to nail what it means, “trying to catch it and reel it in,” offers Ferry. He uses a fishing image to discuss a play about angling, in both the literal and metaphoric sense. “If you ever truly capture love, from The Man’s point of view, you have to take a priest [a mallet used to kill a caught fish] and finish it off.”

And what about the nightly cleaning of the fish, according to the script a trout?

“Happily,” he says with a smile, “I love cooking it’s my way of relaxing. Back years ago in Newfoundland, I worked on a movie where I had to clean, gut and scale a fish quickly, and I spent some time training in a plant with the local fishermen.

“Here, there’s a time jump in the script, and we can’t cook the fish in real time. Each night I have to take the prepared fish home and bring it in, cooked, to be eaten the next day. I’ve asked Jane how she wants her trout cooked. I hope it’ll be different for each performance.”

He’s happy to be performing for Coal Mine he directed their production of Bull last season.

“I’m thrilled, as an east-ender, to be connecting with a local, edgy, successful company that engages its audience in an intimate space. Many people who came to last year’s shows were locals. Coal Mine’s already sold over 200 season passes for this second season.”

jonkap@nowtoronto.com

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