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Culture Theatre

The City

THE CITY by Martin Crimp (Actors Repertory Company). At Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs (26 Berkeley). To April 3. 416-368-3110. See Continuing. Rating: NNN


Martin Crimp’s The City is an experiment coldly calculated to elicit certain states of feeling.

Crimp’s plays are often compared to Harold Pinter’s absurdist critiques of modernity, but while Pinter contrasts his famous loaded pauses with rapid-fire dialogue, Crimp lets his surreal action unfold in what feels like slow motion. It’s his way of teasing out and representing the fundamental disconnection at the core of all human relationships.

In The City, his most recent play (this is the Canadian premiere), he meditates on a contemporary, urban middle-aged couple, Clair (Deb Drakeford) and Christopher (Peter James Haworth), who attempt to communicate the mundane events of their depressing, middle-class lives to each other.

The challenge of this play is looking past the trivial plot – which later includes confrontations with their piano-playing daughter (Anja Bundy), and a creepy neighbour/nurse (Janet Porter) – to experience the unsettling effects of those long, Pinteresque pauses, Gillian Gallow’s austere, clinical modernist set and the foreboding hums of Robert Perrault’s menacing sound design.

Director Cristian Popescu understands Crimp’s vision and exacerbates these grating effects by constantly testing the audience’s patience. Pauses are held very long, and the intentionally lethargic blocking is almost always suggestive.

Despite the odd and at times uncomfortable ride, this play does important work by exposing how distant even our closest relationships really are.[rssbreak]

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