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The Retreat

by Jason Sherman

Vigil

by Morris Panych

The titles of two new plays – 1995 GG-winner Jason Sherman’s The Retreat and 1994 GG-winner Morris Panych’s Vigil – conjure up images of intimate, solemn religious rituals. Both plays are, however, nominally comedies, and perhaps it’s a sign of our cynical, secular age that they each derive their biggest laughs from the spectacle of flawed human beings falling short of old-fashioned spiritual ideals.

The retreat in Jason Sherman’s play is, in fact, not a religious one at all. It’s a writer’s retreat, but religion is very much on the mind of its main character, David Fine. He’s a movie producer sick of the shallow, violent entertainments he and his partner, Jeff, have been pumping out for far too long, and when he finds himself strongly drawn to a script about a 17th-century rabbi, Zevi, he invites Rachel, its author, to attend a writer’s workshop he’ll be running at a mountain resort.

Perhaps the story of Zevi, which I presume is a true one, is too close to Sherman’s heart. He constructs his present-day plot – about the triangle that develops between Rachel and David (who begin a tentative romance) and Jeff (who encourages Rachel to vulgarize her poetic, sincere script) – in a way that is meant to mirror the events in the Zevi screenplay. But it is hard to believe that a successful movie producer, even one as spiritually starved as David, would fall in love with a script as unlikely and unwieldy as Zevi. It’s also unconvincing that the idealistic Rachel would change her script so readily and so exactly in line with Jeff’s grotesque suggestions.

The play moves along with a lot of zip, and scores a lot of points off the movie industry (when David complains about the behaviour of the killer in their studio’s latest opus, Jeff replies, “So he bites off their nipples, what, are you saying that never happens?”). And Sherman’s knack for funny offhand dialogue is always in evidence. Perhaps if the choice between purity and compromise hadn’t been made so absolute – if Rachel’s script had been commercialized instead of vulgarized – the play wouldn’t seem so forbiddingly moralistic. Pop culture can be uplifting and worthy art, too; Jason Sherman has proved the fact himself in play after play.

By contrast, Kemp, the hero of Morris Panych’s Vigil, hardly gives religion, or tenderness, or love, or any higher emotion a second thought. He’s received a letter from his aunt Grace, whom he hasn’t seen in years, telling him she’s about to die. As the play opens, he arrives at her bedside, and he spends the rest of his time onstage waiting for her to make good on her promise. He has a long wait ahead of him.

The play is a stylized series of brief scenes in which the aged Grace remains cryptically silent, while Kemp delivers hilariously bitter and hostile speeches on two basic themes: how much he hates himself; and how annoyingly long it’s taking his aunt to die. (He says things like “Why are you putting on makeup? Let the mortician do that.”)

Kemp is such a terrific comic character that he rescues the play from becoming a mere exercise in sick humour. The lines Panych supplies for him are like every horrible, unspoken thought you’ve ever had while visiting a burdensome, unfamiliar relative. But their cruelty is undercut – Kemp is so lonely and pathetic and friendless that his shallowness and hostility become weirdly endearing. Even when he tries to rig up a device to kill Grace, he only injures himself.

Probably the most remarkable thing about Vigil is what happens three-quarters of the way through the play. That’s the funniest moment in the entire piece, and although I have not seen the play performed, I’m sure it’s a show-stopper. And yet, right after that huge laugh, Panych manages to turn the play around and make the situation surprisingly moving. And, improbably, the shift in tone, as Kemp (in his own abrasive way) actually begins to show some tenderness towards Grace, seems perfectly in keeping with everything we’ve seen happen before.

Vigil sets off a whole chain of revelations by the time it’s over. Details from earlier scenes reveal themselves in a new light, the facts Kemp gives us about his unhappy childhood pay off – and, what’s most important, a play that seemed so mean-spirited at first turns out to be just the opposite. Panych believes there’s even hope for a person like Kemp, and he convinces us, too.

 

Reviewer: Paul Matwychuk

Publisher: Playwright’s Canada Press

DETAILS

Price: $12.95

Page Count: 120 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 0-88754-511-4

Released: Dec.

Issue Date: 1996-12

Categories: Politics & Current Affairs

Reviewer: Paul Matwychuk

Publisher: Talon

DETAILS

Price: $13.95

Page Count: 80 pp

Format: Paper

ISBN: 0-88922-365-3

Released: Oct.

Issue Date: December 1, 1996

Categories: Politics & Current Affairs