Reviews of Play Mu Jeart in a Suitcase
On Friday, May 18th, the Lindsay Little Theatre opens upwardly some heavy emotional baggage with director Rebecca Flower's production of tardily British playwright Clare McIntyre's My Heart'southward A Suitcase.
Featuring the talents of Anwen O'Driscoll, Mackenzie Krunyf, Ilan O'Driscoll, Tori O'Neil, Andre Canivet, Katisha Shaw, and Vasco J.W. Silva, this award-winning British play sports potent performances in an emotionally charged prove.
Making its debut at the Royal Courtroom Theatre in London in 1990, My Centre'southward A Suitcase was one of the historic plays to come up from U.k.'s feminist theatre motion that emerged in the 1980s. Containing a multitude of various subjects, including PTSD, depression, illness, fear, and class conflict, the play earned McIntyre the well-nigh promising playwright award from The London Evening Standard and speedily became a fixture of feminist literature.
Chris (Anwen O'Driscoll), an angry waitress suffering from PTSD from a recent emotional trauma, accepts the offering to stay in a beach-side apartment endemic by an sometime flame who has go wealthy. Although reluctant to stay in the sparsely busy apartment, Chris succumbs to the encouragement of her all-time friend Hannah (Mackenzie Kruyf / Ilan O'Driscoll), a good-natured ceramics teacher who has but been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
However, it'south rapidly established that this isn't going to exist a beatific weekend getaway for either of them. Equally Hannah embraces life, Chris wallows in self-pity and fearfulness, which manifests in the form of two figures in her ain mind: the motherly and religious Luggage (Katisha Shaw) and the horrifying Pest (Vasco J.W. Silva), a product of her mental and emotional trauma.
Meanwhile, the girls see some other pair of intruders in their ill-fated weekend getaway: the flat possessor's uppity wife Tunis (Tori O'Neil) and an alcoholic businessman named Elliot (Andre Canivet). Forever searching for an reply to their identify in the world, the girls seek solace in an uncompromising earth where, ultimately, their but sense of peace is based on their frame of mind.
My Heart'due south A Suitcase is a well-acted and produced production, although the script suffers from some structural flaws that left me searching for more than. Merely through the talents of the performers on stage, the problematic script is well executed.
CBC viewers volition recognize Anwen O'Driscoll, in the pb role of Chris, as the actress who plays Taylor Matheson on the striking dramatic serial Burden of Truth. Angry, depressed, and self-isolated, Chris is convict to her emotional fears as well every bit her crippling cynicism. Obsessed with her role in life and the fact she is not office of the elite, Chris is angry at the world to the point that she can't even go out into it.
Anwen manages to bring something likeable and sympathetic to her hostile and toxic character. This is partially due to her inner conversations with Luggage and Pest, only mainly because of the conviction in her operation.
The part of Hannah volition be played by two unlike performers, Mackenzie Kruyf and Ilan O'Driscoll, on different nights. The performance I watched featured Ilan, who happens to be Anwen'south existent-life sis. Although a supporting character in the piece, Ilan'due south performance makes her the audience favourite — not just considering she creates Hannah'southward sunny disposition which evens out Chris' darkness, but also because of her perfect sense of comedic timing and subtle yet effective commitment. Ilan makes every judgement count with her unusually tranquility and understated tone that steals every scene.
The ii sisters have a natural patter with ane another, with Ilan getting the cute moments. Her functioning non only steals the prove, but steals the audition's hearts. Ilan O'Driscoll is someone to go along an eye on, especially when she makes her big screen debut in a grapheme role in the large-screen adaptation of DC Comic'south Shazam in 2019.
The show is assisted past stiff supporting character roles. Katisha Shaw plays the maternal Luggage with passion and kindness, bringing heart to an oft-harsh script, while Vasco J.Westward. Silva gives an unnerving functioning as Pest in some of the almost disturbing and tense moments of the show.
In his phase debut, Andre Canivet creates the pathetic figure of a pitiful and hopeless man in Elliot, who proves that having money will not bring you lot happiness. He also has a disturbing chemistry with Ilan, whose on-stage fear of the strange man brings forth a very real sense of potential danger.
But it's Tori O'Neil, in the role of pompous and privileged Tunis, who proves to be another stealing performer. Deliciously blunt in her delivery, Tori creates tension on the stage that can be both funny and hostile. Paired with Ilan, the two create the highlight of the show with their painfully awkward conversation as one woman who is unsatisfied despite having everything and another woman who is happy despite having aught.
Tori'southward chemistry with Anwen is like mixing gasoline with fire, creating the explosive crux of the production. I establish Tori O'Neil, in spite of the obnoxious bitchiness of her character, to be delightful to picket.
Although My Heart's A Suitcase is a highly regarded play, I couldn't help merely find flaws within its construction and narrative that left me feeling slightly empty by the terminate. The play begins every bit a journeying through Chris's boxing for her own sanity, simply somehow switches to go a materialistic battle between the haves and the have-nots.
The performers create a beautiful sense of tension that foreshadows either a horrific tragedy or an emotional breakthrough, but the play's resolution is confusingly anti-climactic. While I came to intendance about the characters, I'thou non certain anything is ever resolved.
Maybe what is more stiff about the play is the underlying theme of invasion in the lives of Chris and Hannah. Although they should feel safe with one another while on holiday, their space and prophylactic is continually compromised by both hostile and potentially frightening intruders who clomp into their lives, as well as the demons who live in Chris' cocky-conscious.
These intrusions and the lack of safe spaces ship a powerful, admitting understated, message that the women are not in command of the globe around them.
Despite some structural flaws in the source textile, My Heart's A Suitcase contains fine performances by a fantastic cast of actors, and has been created with passion by Rebecca Bloom and her company. Filled with emotion, the play will hateful different things to different people.
My Middle'south A Suitcase runs at the Lindsay Picayune Theatre on May eighteen, 19, 25 and 26 at 8 p.m. and on May 27 at two p.m. Tickets are $20 and are available at the Lindsay Academy Theatre Box Office or by calling 705.324.9111 or online at www.kawarthatickets.ca.
Source: https://kawarthanow.com/2018/05/18/my-hearts-a-suitcase/
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