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| Review: Kingfisher Days (Tarragon; Toronto) |
'Kingfisher Days'
by Susan Coyne
Tarragon Theatre (Toronto)
Feb 25th
until March 30th
Directed by Albert Shultz
Featuring Susan Coyne, Joe Ziegler and Martha Burns
By Regen Danly
This play, adapted from Susan Coyne's critically acclaimed childhood memoir 'Kingfisher Days', is a quiet, gentle soft-spoken pleasure. In it, we travel back to Coyne's childhood at her family's summer cottage near Lake of the Woods and are taken on an unpretentious visit to the innocence of her five-year-old self and her correspondence with a fairy through notes left in an abandoned fireplace. The journey is sweet, delicate as wildflowers themselves. Almost poignant.
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(L to R) Joseph Ziegler, Susan Coyne and Martha Burns in
KINGFISHER DAYS by Susan Coyne at Tarragon Theatre
until March 30. 2003; photo by Cylla von Tiedemann |
The 'Kingfisher Days' or Halcyon days of the title refers to the calm waters where Kingfisher nests may be safe, the happy prosperous days between the rougher mid-winter seas.
Susan Coyne is delightful and self-deprecating starring in her own play, playing herself as a five year old, as well as narrating her story as the adult she has become. The play is a nod to 'Our Town' and 'On Golden Pond' in tone if not in content The meaning and subtext of this particular summer's magical adventures is implied when she reminds us that she has grown to become an actor--and a very good actor she is--implying that she is still attached in adulthood to the magic she experienced as a five year old.
This is a very personal story, both a strength and perhaps a weakness.
Ms. Coyne manages to slip into childhood innocence like slipping on a glove. She does not overstate or patronize, but inhabits the wonder and trust of a five year old with no comment or judgement. As well, she does not avoid the sense of the loneliness and confusion that comes with a child's dependence on the whims and incomprehensible idiosyncrasies of adults. Her performance as her childhood self is one of the best parts of this production.
The level of comfort between the cast and director are readily apparent. And so it should be as they are long time friends and colleagues. Albert Shultz directs his wife Susan Coyne along side fellow Soulpepper alum, actor/director Joe Zeigler and Martha Burns, wife of pal Paul Gross (of 'Men with Brooms' fame).
Joe Zeigler is both the Yin and Yang of the adult males in Ms Coyne's life that summer. Mr. Zeigler plays the empirically oriented father who affectionately, if dismissively, supports his daughter's whimsical fantasies, and the gentle, garden-loving retired teacher and neighbour, Mr. Moir, who secretly creates for young 'Susan' the correspondence with the arrogant and self-absorbed fairy, Nootsie Tah. For him, this moment of whimsy is also his oasis from his chronically ailing wife.
Joe Zeigler is effective as both characters, though a more marked delineation of the characters might have been helpful. The distinction between these two characters was minimal in both demeanour and dress, with only a hat added to suggest the neighbour. It was clear that they were different but the difference could have been more specific. As well, an opportunity for a more substantial, private moment was missed in neglecting to take time with Mr. Moir's own struggle with his personal storms, underlining the meaning of his own 'Kingfisher Days' with young Susan.
Martha Burns delivers the amusingly 2D view of Susan's homily-spouting mother who is long on dutifully affection and somewhat innocently short on real connection with her child. Her silhouetted mime of 'mother' taking her 30 second dip to 'cool off' in the lake, apparently a familial rarity, was hilarious. Alternately, Ms Burns pulled out a slightly brittle but yummy brat in her portrayal of the fairy, Nootsie Tah. Would that the scope of this character could have been enlarged and made a little more physical. Noostie Tah could have metaphorically 'swung from the rafters' with humour and arrogant delight in high contrast with us, mere mortals, had she not seemed a little too tethered to the earth. Hello Mr. Shultz. This is the fantasy of a five year old. Have some fun. This is not a documentary.
Unfortunately the set is the weakest aspect of this production. It's static, unbalance in design and usage, much too urban in feel and the surprises afforded to our fairy are minimal. A 'home slide show screen is conspicuous in it's imposing vacancy when not in use. What's more, the most interesting and important relationship takes play at far stage left, leaving the larger portion of the stage incidental. If this play were to be remounted, the set is the element most in need of rethinking.
Ms. Coyne is emerging as a force to be reckoned with as a playwright. She has cut her teeth successfully interpreting Chekhov's unfinished 'Platanov' and several of his shorter plays in Soulpepper's last summer season. Kingfisher Days is her first original play. In the collegial environment that spawned this play, it is easy to see that unbiased perspective is occasionally hard to come by. It may be forgiven that occasionally indulgences might not be excised.
The opening monologue, while charming, self-deprecating, effectively delivered, adds little to the story that ultimately unfolds. It's too long, too quirky, too apologetic in tone, and somewhat intrusive. If it had a purpose, it was to illustrate the contrast between today's chaotic world and the world of those idyllic days of her youth.
Along those same lines, much was lost in minimising the family's chaotic presence. 'The boys,' Coyne's brothers, were mentioned but never surfaced again. Young boys and men are rarely an innocuous presence. The sister who thoughtlessly denies that there are fairies to the impressionable 5-year-old Susan could have been more useful as well. Once introduced so carefully and individually as context for this sensitive little girl, it seems odd to have them disappear almost entirely without further influence. A little more of the busy-ness of a large family at the cottage might have explained more clearly how Susan was left to her own devices as 'the sensitive one' and been driven to visit the also sensitive Mr. Moir next door.
Nevertheless, Ms Coyne is unquestionably a playwright to watch in future. With confidence, there is no doubt that she will emerge as a powerful and poignant voice. And in the end it is easy to happily recommend 'Kingfisher Days' as an evening in the theatre well worth the price of admission.
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