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| Outlying Islands, World Stage (Toronto) |
CAO Review
by Regan Danly
World Stage Festival
Traverse Theatre Co (Scotland) presents
Outlying Islands
By David Greig
Directed by Philip Howard
Cast: Robert Carr, Lesley Hart, Sam Heughan, and Laurence Mitchell
April 9th - 13th, du Maurier Theatre.
If there were a single word that would encapsulate this play it would be remoteness. The island itself, the four people on it, even the emotional journey taken is less about being isolated than it is about being
out of reach.
The play opens on designer Fiona Watts' stark, sculptural interpretation of a cross-sected interior of cave-like 'pagan' chapel under a grass-edged slope, set against a projected sky. It is spare within, abandoned, stark and exposed above. A stone shelf for sitting and sleeping are upstage of the interior. A stone fire pit, and an aged table on a stony dirt floor complete the setting.
Two young ornithologists, sent from 'the ministry', arrive ostensibly to live on the island to record the habits and numbers of the seabirds, especially Fork-tails, which are unique to these remote islands, some 40 miles off the coast of Scotland. It is shortly before World War II. The only other inhabitants are a dour elderly man (Kirk), the owner of the island, and his
gothic, plain adult niece, Ellen (Lesley Hart). They keep sheep on the island. Words are few and of one syllable. They survive in tandem, without extraneous comment.
Our young scientists are another matter. By contrast, Robert, played by Laurence Mitchell is verbosity embodied, the analyst, the intellectual assessing and making note of all he sees, even his own reactive behaviour, as if stepping out of himself will protect him from what he feels. While John (Sam Heughan), the less intellectually inclined is the more physical of the two, pack-muling most of their tea-boxes of equipment to their billet in the chapel, he is a more fragile sensibility, lonely, virginal, isolated from his body and his sexuality by social convention. He nevertheless has agreed to accompany Robert on this isolated expedition out of friendship and in consideration of how his association with the more dynamic Robert may help establish him in his profession. He is innocent of Robert's affection.
All is not quite as it seems elsewhere as well. The old man explains that he expects compensation from the ministry for his losses, for the sheep, the broken door to the chapel, all his property. As he, against strict doctor's orders, drinks the better part of the scotch the young men have offered, we learn that the ministry intends not to preserve the habitat of these unique birds but to test a biological weapon, anthrax. The old man dies from the effects of the alcohol exacerbated by a brief, alarming moment of physical struggle with Robert. His death leaves Ellen alone on the island with these same two young men and no expectation of a boat from the mainland for weeks yet.
Inch by stingy inch director, Philip Howard tautly pays out hints of Robert's real interest in John. Mitchell skilfully maintains Robert's delicate ambiguity as he tests John's attraction to Ellen, hinting at a masculine competition for her in these raw, urgent surroundings. He pulls John to him, seducing him with his intellect and physical roughhousing, bonding him with the secret of their responsibility for the old man's death. It finally becomes clear that Robert competes not with John but for him.
Ellen, now freed from her uncle's restrictive, unaffectionate and de-sexing presence bursts into her late blooming adolescence. Hart's performance is a delicious contrast, an explosion of unexpectedly ripe sexuality. She talks in streams, throwing control of her words, her thoughts, her body, her mind to the wind. She tries the scotch for the first time and more importantly…she makes her intentions toward the men very plain indeed. Without hesitation or shame, she seduces virginal, frightened, hungry, confused, hapless John, swooping on him like a tern on a minnow. Naked in a moment, she instructs him, 'Put the blanket on the table. Take your clothes off. Take me now.' And drawing him on top of her, they make love as Robert re-enters the chapel. He must stay to watch, tortured. John, confused and mid-coitus, must choose between them, realizing only later what the choice will cost Robert.
This is a strong play from David Greig, a playwright whose original work has made substantial contributions to the Traverse Theatre through the 90s. His discussion of the desperation of the sexual denial each of his characters struggle to overcome is a theme that wears its subversive social tension well enough, though it seems somewhat dated post 'sexual revolution'. The play, though, is not so much about the 'shocking' existence of homosexual love, but about John's choice as a virgin, between homosexual and heterosexual attraction. It might have been helpful if the nature of Robert's agenda in bringing John to the island was set up more clearly and earlier. This particular bit of information is quite critical to the dynamic that evolves. More attention, more time spent on the sexual tension between the men and John's confusion about it seems key to the complexity of the triangle. The play stalled through the middle from the vagueness of that intention.
The nudity was somewhat more distracting than affective and unsuccessfully treads the line between a coy demureness and the appearance of veracity in this urgent and presumably clumsy sexual consummation. If you get your actors naked on stage…you'd better convince us of the sincerity of intention with believable action rather than remind us that it is merely a simulation. As a result, the sex scene and the nudity amounted to a gimmick, taking us entirely off the island and back into the theatre.
Interestingly in the end, as only two of the four leave the island, there is no sense that the crisis they have weathered has truly help any of them overcome their state of isolation from each other or themselves. There change but the dilemmas remain, even though the struggle has been costly.
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