FOOL FOR LOVE by Sam Shepard (Ezra’s Atlantic Co-op). At the Meta Gallery (124 Ossington). To January 21. $20. 416-955-0500. See listing. Rating: NNNN
Sam Shepard‘s 1983 play Fool for Love is in part about a distasteful secret between two lovers, and this unnervingly intimate production might leave you wondering whether it’s possible to not be a fool for it all, secrets or no.
Director and designer Steven McCarthy has a talent for drawing out the tenderness within the tawdry and tumbledown. Here, he feasts on Shepard’s psychosexual study of May and Eddie, the on-again, off-again lovers duking it out in a motel room on the edge of the Mojave. The set and sound design are sparse but effective, cleverly featuring music from The White Stripes – another pair with a famously ambiguous relationship.
In an opening volley of brash guitars and garnet streaks of light, the two engage in a sparring dance that’s equal parts hostile and lustful. As May, Katie Boland has the milky complexion of a girl innocent and the blood-red mouth of a woman wronged. Her toggling from one to the other is dizzying in a good way like the lasso-throwing Eddie (a charmingly reprobate Benjamin Blais), you don’t know whether to pity her or cower in fear.
But it’s Barry Flatman‘s turn as the Old Man that pushes the production to an emotional peak. The whole drama between May and Eddie feels at moments like it might just be his tequila-fuelled reverie, a mix of memories and notions of what his life could’ve been. They should be so lucky.
