A SUMMER’S DAY by Jon Fosse, directed by Cynthia Ashperger (Play Inc). At Alley Theatre Workshop (12 Ossington). To November 7, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm. $15-$20. 416-927-0906. See listing. Rating: NNN
Though the title of Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse’s A Summer’s Day may conjure up pleasant images, it’s actually a work about how the past can imprison the present.
Its central figure, an Elderly Woman (Fosse often gives archetypal names to his characters), has an afternoon visit with an Elderly Friend, but what’s foremost in her mind is the day years before when her restless husband Asle set sail on the fjord near their isolated house, never to return.
The Elderly Woman keeps receding into her memory to relive that day. Now the Young Woman, she and Asle alternate between arguing and making up their dialogue is a blend of tension and playfulness. The Young Friend visited that day, also, so we meet the women in two time periods.
Director Cynthia Ashperger has had the inventive idea of using Balinese masks and Japanese Butoh theatre to stage the piece they accentuate the script’s slow, ritualistic feel. At the start of the show, we watch Ashperger (Old/Young Woman) and Lara Arabian (Old/Young Friend) don the masks and priestly gowns to become the elder figures they literally bend with age, thanks to the work of choreographer Brandy Leary.
What’s powerful about the women’s performances is how emotionally expressive they are using the masks and their bodies they’re as memorable and suggestive as the old characters and as the younger figures, who don’t wear masks.
Sifting unhappily through the ashes of the past, the Elderly Woman plays out scenes again and again in her mind. Overlapping repeated lines, both spoken live and in a crackly recording, give the action an eerie feel.
The play is full of unanswered questions: does Asle (Dylan Smith, who wears a ghostly mask in the present scenes) leave because he doesn’t want to see the other woman? Has the Young Woman repressed some of the past because it’s uncomfortable? Why have they moved to such an isolated house? How does the Friend’s husband (Michael Kash) relate to the central character?
While the material can be too repetitious and the narrative protracted – the point is made again and again – Ashperger’s direction and performance are gripping. As the Young Woman her voice is high, her actions spontaneous and increasingly desperate as the Old, she lowers her voice and moves in a stylized manner. The elder is, at times, a kind of parody of the younger.
The design, especially Ida Bagus Anom’s masks, Alex Gilbert’s costumes and Dale Yim’s sound, is also strong. Emir Geljo’s simple set blends the worlds of reality and memory even further in the play’s final haunting moments.[rssbreak]
