THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS NEXT by Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks (Necessary Angel/Canadian Stage). At Berkeley Street Theatre (26 Berkeley). To May 8. $20-$45. 416-368-3110. See Continuing. Rating: NNN
“What happens next?” Gripping narratives set up that question.
But what if you’re telling the story of your life – and you’re in the midst of living it? That’s one of the dilemmas facing the characters in Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks’s latest show, which cleverly, if coolly, tackles this philosophical conundrum.
Presented by Canadian Stage, the Necessary Angel production begins with MacIvor entering the theatre late – long, chatty, funny story about a Starbucks lineup – before changing into costume and laying the groundwork for one of those solo shows he vowed he was giving up a few years ago.
Something bad has happened to him, he suggests, and soon his alter ego, Will – a character named for the Schopenhauer theory about human will – begins setting up a spiralling, multi-character story.
First there’s Warren, a bitter gay man who’s contemplating getting his stuff back from his ex, who’s currently having a barbecue. Dissuading Warren from doing that is his friend/lawyer Susan, a single mom who’s recently re-entered the dating pool with Aaron. Aaron, an astrologer, used to be Erin, whose in-law Mike is an alcoholic and father to imaginative kid Kevin.
MacIvor, helped immensely by designers Kimberly Purtell (lights) and Richard Feren (sound), inhabits these characters with mixed success. Mike, his menacing face in shadow, comes across full of powerfully complex emotions, but Susan, though funny, verges on shrill and clichéd.
But the writing’s uneven, especially around the key figure of Warren, who’s more worried about retrieving his John Denver CD than he is about digging into why or how his relationship failed. The narratives have a twice-removed quality that fails to draw us in but rather makes us think about how they’re constructed – and ultimately how they all fit together.
Brooks’s immaculate production makes fine use of the playing area MacIvor’s position on stage helps orient us in the complicated geography.
Like an expert juggler, he never drops a narrative ball. But for a play described as MacIvor’s “most autobiographical work to date,” it’s chillingly oblique, with a centre more intellectual than heartfelt.
