A wild trip to nowhere 2 Stars
A Boy Called Newfoundland
Like much of the newspaper industry, The Romantic Times is not in the best of shape. Readership of this mostly user-generated Maritime publication is down, though whether this is due to an international romance recession or a proliferation of free romantic blogs is left unclear in Graeme Gillis’s new play, A Boy Called Newfoundland.
Married co-editors Marianne and Bill Willow (Martha Burns and Layne Coleman, both underused) aren't feeling the romance much themselves, so they decide to renew their vows and rediscover their purpose on a trip to Newfoundland, where they came up with the idea for their good-news newspaper decades ago. Something goes wrong, however, and only Marianne returns to the family home, depressed and tight-lipped about the whereabouts of Bill.
A Boy Called Newfoundland is primarily concerned with the effect of this split on the Willows’ three children.
Not falling far from the tree, the Willow kids are eccentrics. Presumed oldest Arley-Rose (Lara Jean Chorostecki) is the most straitlaced, but is planning to elope with Hadley, her sweaty-palmed divinity-school boyfriend (a wonderful Martin Happer). Brigid (Natasha Greenblatt), the 18-year-old foul-mouthed hipster of the family, is jealous of her older sibling and has an unhealthy crush on her younger one; and Newfoundland (Patrick Kwok-Choon), 15, is obsessed with French camp, cadets and composing minimalist electro on a tiny, tinny keyboard he carries around at all times.
The title of the play is a bit off because though this boy is named Newfoundland, everyone calls him Flounder - the exception being his long-distance sorta-girlfriend, Evelyn (Vivien Endicott-Douglas) who appears floating above the stage from Jonquière, Quebec, from time to time.
None of the Willows seem particularly interested in school or careers, but that’s okay because they live in Gillis’s offbeat version of reality, one full of turkey shoots and Resurrection-themed balls, a place you can support a family of five with a niche publication.
A Cape Breton native living in New York, Gillis writes like he’s aspiring to be a middle-class, Maritime version of Wes Anderson. A Boy Called Newfoundland particularly brings to mind the cinematic family saga The Royal Tenenbaums, with its mix of melancholy and sentimentality, absent father and not entirely disapproving hints of incest.
When the children discover, in the first act, that Bill Willow has “snapped his cap” - though he seems as sane as any of the others - and is ice-fishing at Butterscotch Lake, this meandering play loses its last bit of narrative thrust.
I suppose ultimately it is Newfoundland’s coming-of-age story, but Gillis keeps taking us down narrative blind alleys. The second act is particularly baffling, as the characters and plotlines just drop off the map one by one.
Playing out on a colourful, if awkward, set of giant steps with lots of nooks and crannies designed by Robin Fisher, director Ashlie Corcoran’s production for Theatre Smash has a few memorable scenes, notably a charming and then sad one where Evelyn and Newfoundland (the person) exchange snippets of songs over the phone late at night. There’s also a very funny mimed one featuring Arley-Rose and Brigid on a wild car trip to Newfoundland (the place), but it literally and figurative goes nowhere. (Chorostecki and Greenblatt have great chemistry as the sisters.)
But plays are more than just a series of quirky scenes, and really compelling characters are more than a collection of odd tics and traits. A Boy Called Newfoundland is full of holes - it seems like a first draft with the final pages missing.
A Boy Called Newfoundland runs until April 11.
SOURCE
Like much of the newspaper industry, The Romantic Times is not in the best of shape. Readership of this mostly user-generated Maritime publication is down, though whether this is due to an international romance recession or a proliferation of free romantic blogs is left unclear in Graeme Gillis’s new play, A Boy Called Newfoundland.
Married co-editors Marianne and Bill Willow (Martha Burns and Layne Coleman, both underused) aren't feeling the romance much themselves, so they decide to renew their vows and rediscover their purpose on a trip to Newfoundland, where they came up with the idea for their good-news newspaper decades ago. Something goes wrong, however, and only Marianne returns to the family home, depressed and tight-lipped about the whereabouts of Bill.
A Boy Called Newfoundland is primarily concerned with the effect of this split on the Willows’ three children.
Not falling far from the tree, the Willow kids are eccentrics. Presumed oldest Arley-Rose (Lara Jean Chorostecki) is the most straitlaced, but is planning to elope with Hadley, her sweaty-palmed divinity-school boyfriend (a wonderful Martin Happer). Brigid (Natasha Greenblatt), the 18-year-old foul-mouthed hipster of the family, is jealous of her older sibling and has an unhealthy crush on her younger one; and Newfoundland (Patrick Kwok-Choon), 15, is obsessed with French camp, cadets and composing minimalist electro on a tiny, tinny keyboard he carries around at all times.
The title of the play is a bit off because though this boy is named Newfoundland, everyone calls him Flounder - the exception being his long-distance sorta-girlfriend, Evelyn (Vivien Endicott-Douglas) who appears floating above the stage from Jonquière, Quebec, from time to time.
None of the Willows seem particularly interested in school or careers, but that’s okay because they live in Gillis’s offbeat version of reality, one full of turkey shoots and Resurrection-themed balls, a place you can support a family of five with a niche publication.
A Cape Breton native living in New York, Gillis writes like he’s aspiring to be a middle-class, Maritime version of Wes Anderson. A Boy Called Newfoundland particularly brings to mind the cinematic family saga The Royal Tenenbaums, with its mix of melancholy and sentimentality, absent father and not entirely disapproving hints of incest.
When the children discover, in the first act, that Bill Willow has “snapped his cap” - though he seems as sane as any of the others - and is ice-fishing at Butterscotch Lake, this meandering play loses its last bit of narrative thrust.
I suppose ultimately it is Newfoundland’s coming-of-age story, but Gillis keeps taking us down narrative blind alleys. The second act is particularly baffling, as the characters and plotlines just drop off the map one by one.
Playing out on a colourful, if awkward, set of giant steps with lots of nooks and crannies designed by Robin Fisher, director Ashlie Corcoran’s production for Theatre Smash has a few memorable scenes, notably a charming and then sad one where Evelyn and Newfoundland (the person) exchange snippets of songs over the phone late at night. There’s also a very funny mimed one featuring Arley-Rose and Brigid on a wild car trip to Newfoundland (the place), but it literally and figurative goes nowhere. (Chorostecki and Greenblatt have great chemistry as the sisters.)
But plays are more than just a series of quirky scenes, and really compelling characters are more than a collection of odd tics and traits. A Boy Called Newfoundland is full of holes - it seems like a first draft with the final pages missing.
A Boy Called Newfoundland runs until April 11.
SOURCE