First there was the word, and the word was ...overused

I was treated to another lovely evening with Craig - whom many of you remember as my partner in crime for daring art experiences, who had just returned from a Kayaking trip in Cuba with a few sexy little Cohiba cigarillos and tales of corruption and bureaucracy in the Caribbean - grace a Ken Hammlin, the sexy young publicists for Prodigal Son, the Sean Macdonald play about one man's struggle to commune his Catholic upbringing with his gay life. We were in good cie as other local celebs had flocked to this performance of the play including Pam Gill, Kevin Simpson, the Boca de Lupo crowd and a few of the usual theatre-going suspects....all minor stars in their own right

...too bad the play didn't shine like the audience did.

Now we all know that the young gay man is going to come to terms with his religiosity at a crucial moment of redemption when his dad is on his deathbed ready to accept his long lost son...well you know the story of Prodigal Son from the Old Testamen...don't need ot repeat it? It seemed that the Mr Macdonald felt he needed to. So all the actors go on talking about God, God, God, as if he was your neighbor, your principal or your el presidente. I can't even count the number of times God was used in the dialogue- wasn't there another passage in that same book that forbade the number of times you could take that word in vain?

Here's my beef with the play. When you are dealing with religion, you need to find new ways of describing what is essentially a very very old idea. You can't just keep pounding the word of God in, expecting a change in our understanding of it.

Generally we are uncomfortable with religion being talked about publicly - vestigal remains of secular humanism I fear, like democracy. We, as Canadians, are particularly uncomfortable with it. The story is set in Montreal in the 70's - a place that just broke out of the Duplessi's religous yoke of with the quiet revolution -and promptly began a cultural one. There is no need for tabooing the subject from the public sphere, except for the fact that religion, which is such a powerful personal experience, can get very righteous, and damn right hypocritical when it's yelled over the soap-box. We seem to cringe when we hear God being talked about like a righteous, powerful magician patriarch as he is in the OT.

The playwright was obviously attempting to shed light on this malaise we have about religion, particularly for the homosexual clan, who have a huge stake in this unholy matrimony. But subtlety is key in these delicate matters, and this production just did not pull it off. I blame it mostly on the layout of the stage at Pacific Theatre which weakened the great theatrical tools - hence the powerful message - at play. Pacific Theatre is a tiny stage at the bottom of two opposit sets of risers in a church basement, where you are always seeing the faces of the audience across from the actors... You get a very different sense of intimacy in that space, which does not lend itself to fancy lighting or mis-en-scene to tell your story - which this play was quite heavily dependant on. Essentially the church-space was sabotaging God's message...oh the irony.

...and did I mention the writing could have used a little more work? The story of a young man who leaves his home to go on a quest/search to commune with nature, to fight evil and learn about the truth, to find peace and god and bring it back to his people... is the oldest story in the world. It's everywhere from Homer to Star Wars... Joseph Campbell, in Hero of a Thousand Faces, says it's the essential human experience story that is shared by all... myths retell the story by keeping it alive - and vice versa.

Anyway, Prodigal Son, the play, was NOT the next installment in the Hero Myth...It's a way too preachy, just like Catholisism - as this review is starting to become. So off I go.
Don't bother to see it, rent Breaking the Waves by Lars Von Trier instead.