Graham Hicks review
The Invention of Romance
By Conni Massing - world premiere
Workshop West Theatre
La Cite Francophone, 8627 91 St.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Through April 13, 2014
Playwright Conni Massing can pull in an audience all by herself, because the turf she occupies is so darned honest, and sweet, and insightful … and pure prairie-grown cracked wheat.
Her writing stays comfortably within memories and stories of Central Alberta, of small-town incidents, of people who leave for the big-cities but the country never quite leaves them. Just look at the titles – The Aberhart Summer, Jake and the Kid, Gravel Run, Dustsluts, Homesick …
She’s the reason I made my first trek to a Workshop West Theatre production in many a year, for the premiere of her latest play, The Invention of Romance, playing in La Cite Francophones’s performing space through April 13.
The play I had no trouble with, though it’s a tad loose and will be better a much better script once it’s had about a half-hour of editing. The three-hander show, at 2.5 hours right now, is a marathon.
It covers the ultra-mined territory of lookin’ for love in all the wrong places - how many scripts have been about high-achieving, 30-something, urban professional women who just can’t find the right guy?
But it has the comfy Massing context. Her character Kate heads from the big city to mama’s home in small-town Alberta every time she has a guy-problem, for chicken soup, gingersnaps, and her mom’s reassuring words.
The twist is when long-widowed Momma, in her late ‘70s, reveals she’s dating her high school sweetheart, and it’s getting serious. Plus there’s numerous sub-themes vying for attention – Kate as a museum curator charged with mounting an exhibit about romance, the missing ending to a play mom and her new boyfriend were in 60 years before.
It’s a sweet story, but this production is still a draft, and Lora Brovold as Kate is in dire need of a director.
Brovold is obviously a good actor, but the non-stop repetition of a limited number of emotional responses – nervous laughter, eye-rolling, jittery movements – was downright annoying by half-time, and there was still an hour left in the show.
Where the heck was the director who should have been working with Brovold to find the depth and breadth of this character, to rein in the far too over-wrought mannerisms, to find some rhythm besides charging through the script as fast as humanly possible?
Saving this show was the wonderful performance of Valerie Ann Pearson as Kate’s mom Louisa. Pearson nailed Louisa with delicious minimalism, one deft tuck of her apron saying so much more than Brovold’s non-stop hand-wringing, her quiet “yes sweetheart” conveying so much more emotional depth than Brovold’s babble. Louisa is everybody’s favourite mom, and her falling in love at 79 is the sweet spot of The Invention of Romance.
Meanwhile Mat Busby does an admirable job of playing the many male characters, mostly as the quiet, unassuming assistant to Kate, who, gosh darn and as Bob Dylan would have told her, is the one you love and he’s been standing next to you. For the past 2.5 hours!
Certainly The Invention of Romance has the potential to join Massing’s Top Five shows. But it’s not there yet, overloaded by too many scenes, too much cute play-writing tricks, and far too much verbiage.
Perhaps being both director/dramaturge is asking too much of any one individual, in this case a Tracy Carroll who seems without any overview of The Invention of Romance – and was either unwilling or blind to Brovold’s over-the-top and endlessly repetitious portrayal of Kate.
If you’re a fan of Conni Massing’s writing, and I sure am, take in this show as a study of the evolution of a playwright. I suspect any halfway knowledgeable observer would arrive at the same conclusion as me – this show has potential but it ain’t there yet.
The Invention of Romance is equally as interesting as an observation in the pitfalls and challenges of a small professional theatre company with the applaudable determination to mount new works, but with limited resources. I’m sure rehearsal time was too limited to tackle the nuances, with the actors, director and backstage staff consumed with simply getting this thing stage-ready in time for opening night.
But as it is, sorry Conni and all the hard-working folks at Workshop West, The Invention of Romance is just too much of a slog for the average theatre-goer.