HAPPY PLACE by Pamela Mala Sinha, directed by Alan Dilworth, with Diane D’Aquila, Deborah Drakeford, Caroline Gillis, Oyin Oladejo, Irene Poole, Liisa Repo-Martell and Sinha. Presented by Soulpepper at the Young Centre (50 Tank House). Opens Thursday (September 10) and runs in rep to October 17. $29.50-$94. 416-866-8666, soulpepper.ca.
MARAT/SADE by Peter Weiss, directed by Albert Schultz, with Stuart Hughes, Diego Matamoros, Katherine Gauthier and Gregory Prest. Presented by Soulpepper at the Young Centre (50 Tank House). Previews begin Monday (September 14), opens September 22 and runs in rep to October 17. $29.50-$94. 416-866-8666, soulpepper.ca.
For the past few months, Oyin Oladejo has been spending her time, theatrically speaking, in two very different places of refuge.
A graduate of the Soulpepper Academy, Oladejo is in two of the company’s fall plays, Pamela Mala Sinha’s Happy Place and Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade – or to give the work its full name, The Persecution And Assassination Of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed By The Inmates of The Asylum Of Charenton Under The Direction Of The Marquis De Sade.
Sinha’s Happy Place is an outgrowth of her earlier, Dora-winning Crash, in which the solo character deals with sexual attack and post-traumatic stress. Characters removed from that earlier work have their own play here, as women living in an in-patient care facility.
“What’s central to the story is the idea of compassion,” says Oladejo. “It’s a lack of compassion that has gotten the six women here, where they work with a female doctor who understands that problem.”
The actor plays Samira, the youngest of the six, who arrives in a strange environment and isn’t sure how to react.
“As we slowly get to know her, we realize she’s there to find an answer for herself, not be with others. What she finds over the course of the show is that she can discover meaning in these women, who help ground her in the process she goes through.
“At the end, she doesn’t necessarily have the answer, but through the others has a different lens to examine how she might be healed. Everyone is there to find the will to live it’s built into the process.”
Though the material is serious, the play has its share of humour, even if it’s sometimes painful.
“There’s something of schadenfreude here, which doesn’t try for laughs but is driven by something darker.”
Connection is key to the journey travelled by each woman, even if they don’t understand the others’ paths. Louise, the play’s therapist, is “the person reminding the others that someone cares for them and helps them to love themselves.
“The image I have is that of a trolley rolling down a hallway in the facility, balloons falling off it. Those living there are the balloons. Louise both pulls the trolley toward a destination and keeps putting the fallen balloons back onto the trolley, making sure they’re safe.”
Oladejo won a Dora for Hannah Moscovitch’s In This World, which she performed with Meilie Ng. Returning to an all-female cast is a pleasure.
“This is even better, because here there are six other women,” she says with a little growl of pleasure. “There’s no competition, just a love from woman to woman I’ve never experienced before.”
Turning to Marat/Sade, where she plays an inmate in the asylum, Oladejo notes that she’s taken on a care-giving role that echoes what she experiences in Happy Place.
“It’s set in an asylum in 2015, though the narrative is based on material dealing with the French Revolution and its aftermath. There are two levels at work here, the play-within-the-play created by de Sade and the world of the inmates, who are literally caged in.”
Through improvisations, Olaedjo developed the character of a woman who is a helper, both assisting a narcoleptic inmate who’s central to the play-within-the-play and making sure the props are all placed where they should be.
“I don’t mind being a support to those who anchor the narrative I feel I can be just as strong in that sort of role. We all help bring life to an amazingly layered tale that uses history to look at contemporary situations.”
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
