Australian play features powerhouse acting
Summer of the Aliens
Summer of the Aliens, as warm and searing
as Australian sunshine, bears as marked and insistent similarity to
an American classic.
Australian writer Louis Nowra’s wrenching backward journey, which
made it’s Canadian debut Wednesday in powerful form at the Great
Canadian Theatre Company, bears more than a passing resemblance to Tennessee
Williams’ Glass Menagerie. You could
do worse than model your semi-autobiographical drama on one of the most
poignant and beautiful memory plays in modern theatre.
Like Tom Wingfield, Summer of the Aliens has Lewis, an older
narrator looking back through the haze of memory at his younger self.
He has a sister and is the only male in a troubled mother-run household.
The (mostly) absent father, like the senior Wingfield “who fell
in love with long distances” is a totemic figure of irresponsible
charm.
But those are only the accidentals. The strongest similarity Nowra’s
play shares with Williams’s lies in its hypnotic appeal. The stage
magician, says Tom as Glass Menagerie opens, “gives you
illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth that has
the pleasant disguise of illusion”.
In Summer of the Aliens, which looks at alienation and belonging
in 1962 Australia, that is both the triumph and the sweet allure.
That, and the fact that the GCTC production – directed by Toronto’s
Richard Rose with a sensitivity that melds grace and dynamism in a compelling
whole – happens to have a large cast uniformly capable of powerhouse
acting.
In a play about a young boy and his pivotal relationship with a young
neighbourhood girl, the lion’s share of praise should go to the
two young leads, if things are right. That is the felicitous case in
Summer of the Aliens, which features outstanding performances by Fab
Filippo as Lewis and Stephanie Moore as his friend Dulcie.
Filippo, an accomplished 21-year-old Toronto actor, works uncanny magic
in convincing the audience, from start to finish with never a false
note, that he is 14-year-old Lewis; uncertain, gangly, loving, asthmatic,
nerdy, cruel, kind, curious, despairing, earnest. Whether he is stupidly
taunting the immigrant Dutch girl, or bridling his impatience to listen
to his grandmother, or clapping an inhaler desperately to his mouth,
he works a magic that is no less extraordinary than the simple breaking
of your heart.
As does Stephanie Moore as Dulcie, the young woman cruelly betrayed
by life who is Lewis’s first tender love. In what has to be the
young Ottawa actor’s strongest performance to date in an already
impressive career, Moore blends all the ballsy bravado of a teen rebel
with the nervous vulnerability of a child tortured by things no child
should ever have to confront.
As the older Lewis, John Koensgen choreographs the action and emotional
development with an authoritative sureness and fine restraint. The always-wonderful
Kate Hurman performs with her customary vibrancy in two roles –
that of Lewis’s Scottish grandmother (to whom she gives dignity
as well as comic crankiness), and Dulcie’s hard, religious mother.
In fact – if you don’t count the occasionally faltering
Australian accents, or the unimportant fact that Moore looks older than
she should – there are simply no false notes. From Alan Templeton’s
angry eccentric postman and (in a second role) drunkenly malevolent
stepfather, to Paul Rainville’s charmingly seedy absentee father,
the production enlightens, amuses and – most of all – moves.
Other production details just enhance the effect. Variations on Telstar,
the early ‘60’s instrumental hit, are heard throughout the
memory play, an echo of the time and Lewis’s preoccupation with
space. Graeme Thompson’s set, a clever suggestion of the remembered
and the real, blends surreal patterns with old and actual remnants of
1962 to create the parched landscape of Lewis’s youth and the
troubled, vibrant landscape of his memory.
The whole is bathed in a wash of warm, sometimes searing, Australian
sunshine.
Janice Kennedy
THE OTTAWA CITIZEN
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