THE TRIAL OF KEN GASS by Bobby Del Rio (Sterling Studio Theatre, 163 Sterling, unit 5). To Saturday (August 3). $10. sterlingstudiotheatre.com. See listings. Rating: NNN
Bobby Del Rio’s latest work is called The Trial Of Ken Gass, but don’t expect a play-by-play legal account of the ousting of the former artistic director of the Factory Theatre by its board. Del Rio has simply used the event to riff on the nightmarish situation Gass found himself in – relatable to anyone dealing with a bureaucracy.
Del Rio, who also directs, hammers home the theme’s universality (and, perhaps, the community’s support of Gass) by casting a different actor – spanning race, gender and age – to play him at each performance. He’s also purposefully avoided too much rehearsal with co-actor Jess Salgueiro, who plays Gass’s interrogator, Sarah Bright. This puts the actor out of his or her comfort zone, much as Gass likely was during his ordeal.
In a nondescript room, Gass (played on opening night by TV actor Peter Keleghan) enters, cautious and tired but genial, to be interviewed by Bright, a neurotic mess who has a stack of disorganized papers nearby and seems more concerned with getting Gass to drink a bottle of water or arguing about her personal life than getting to the bottom of his situation.
It soon becomes clear that we’re in a bizarre, Kafkaesque world, one, for instance, where Gass has to prove his artistic “vision” by reading from an eye chart.
The circular arguments and references to (among other works) Oleanna and Waiting For Godot become a little tedious, even at under an hour. And anyone looking for specific details about the local theatre scene will be disappointed (the name Factory Theatre isn’t even mentioned).
But Del Rio’s dialogue is lively, and Salgueiro has fun being the aggressor, twisting Gass’s statements into politically correct pretzels of incoherence. Keleghan, meanwhile, was excellent in the straight role, convincingly moving from mild frustration to exhaustion.
And while the real Ken Gass’s future looks good – his inaugural Canadian Rep Theatre season launches next January – Del Rio provides a suitably bleak and absurd end to his alter ego’s situation in a conclusion that will have you chuckling to yourself, hoping it never happens.
