SCORCHED : Classic Greek tragedy or a flawed and untidy Eulogy ?

Described as the ‘best’ that English theatre from Toronto has to export, if you’re into short and sweet stories that wrap up neatly, then the English translation by Linda Gaboriau of Wajdi Mouawad’s ‘Incendies’ playing at Centaur to November 2 is definitely NOT for You. Mouawad is obviously overly concerned with love, death, home and family, in a war torn world in this attempt to gain our compassion for the plight of his characters.

Director Richard Rose could have taken a flame torch or at least a very sharp pair of scissors to this never ending and overly poetic story and kept Scorched burning brightly. He chose instead to retain the sprawling text and over stated hyperbole leaving us with a very dry after taste of the Plays subject matter and the characters. This is a shame since the stylized story is reminiscent of a true classical Greek tragedy, but unfortunately also seems as long as Ulisees The Iliad. I did enjoy the first act, even though I found myself checking the time anticipating an intermission was long overdue.
 
The sound is well designed by Todd Charlton, as is Graeme Thomson’s  lighting; His set is also adequate and I was surprised how it could be used throughout the entire two hours and forty minutes of the Play without being changed and still it remained useful. And, there are some clever uses of some special effects, although they are possibly not to all that original. BUT the second act with its need to preach and drive home every detailed explanation knocks the punch out of the message and the beauty of the piece like using rusty nails on fine finished furniture. You know it’s time to end the play and wrap things up when less than thirty minutes into the second act everyone still awake has figured out the twist and yet the play rambles on for an additional half hour. Add to this a trick of blocking and lighting so we think that the play is finally over, and we hear a smattering of applause, just to be served up an extended Epilogue leaving us cringing our toes and grating our teeth for something or someone to finally put an end to it all.

Stand out performances were presented by both Sergio Di Zio as Simon and Alon Nashman as Alphonse. I felt that the actors were restrained across the spectrum by the extensive blocking and direction; There could have been more attention made to layering the characters and helping them come across as less one dimensional like with Sophie Goulet as Janine and Nicola Lipman as Nawal. If this is what we can expect as the 'best' to come out of English Canada theatre... then I'm very concerned with the direction of thinking that longer is better dollar value. It is also ironic that this Play is a translation from Québec and the translation has traces of the French original version peering throughout that bilingual or Francophone can detect easily. If Québec is to expect more cultural budget cuts then English Canada will have to start to develop more of its original works.