End of Civilization
***
Written by George F. Walker
Directed by Ken Gass
Starring Brenda Bazinet, David Ferry, Dennis O'Connor
At the Factory Theatre
If the Suburban Motel series is defined by its setting in a single space, its conception of time is blissfully free from any such limitation.
In George F. Walker's mind and in Shawn Kerwin's set design, the bathroom door of the motel room in End of Civilization, for example, is a time machine that facilitates its characters' backward and forward chronological movement. While time manipulation as a narrative or theatrical device is nothing new, what Walker achieves with it is breathtakingly moving and illuminating of a certain human condition.
Here, it's the condition of Henry (Dennis O'Connor), the defeated family man whose job loss (as a result of corporate downsizing) and subsequent two-year unemployment is symptomatic of a failure in the "social contract." This is a man for whom "life is work" and want ads read like war atrocities in terms of their soul-destroying language.
Shortly after he embarks on what his wife Lily (Brenda Bazinet) describes as their "odyssey of doom," Henry becomes the prime suspect in the spree killings of job seekers much like himself.
With all respect to Michael Moore's copyrights, Downsize This indeed. And with equal respect to all the men and women of Canada Post, here's a literal example of "going postal." What begins (or strictly speaking ends, as the play concludes with what is chronologically its first scene) with Henry and Lily attempting to pull themselves out of the pit of despair and destruction eventually leads them to fall deeper into it.
The return of homicide cops Max and Donny (Ron White and David Ferry respectively) from Adult Entertainment and the appearance of the prostitute-next-door, Sandy (Jody Stevens), ensure the couple's speedy downfall.
I mentioned the bathroom door but the other significant element of Kerwin's design (and the play as a whole) is the motel-room window. It allows characters to take a peek inside before they determine their next move, and it's where we leave Lily, on the inside looking out in the final moments of Ken Gass's intense and vigorous production. As with Adult Entertainment, a sense that this could happen to us and the notion of seeing images of ourselves are enhanced through this self-contained version of onstage voyeurism.
Unlike Adult Entertainment (while each play in the six-part cycle is meant to stand alone, comparisons can't be helped when two of them are staged in repertory), End of Civilization is given to speechifying and wearing its politics on its sleeves. Walker, it seems, will leave nothing to chance as Henry and Lily extract every last social and political commentary out of their dire financial predicament -- hence the excessive solemnity and hardly ironic title, End of Civilization.
O'Connor's and Bazinet's performances, however, firmly pull the play back into the realm of the personal. Those who are interested in seeing what a skilled actress can do with one word and look should closely examine Bazinet in a scene where Sandy (riotously captured by Stevens) invites her to go to downtown club at 4 a.m. As Bazinet repeats the word "downtown" like a mantra or a magic spell, a whole new world opens up for actor and character. That it happens to be prostitution is somewhat suspicious but beside the point. Bazinet's voice betrays her in her moments of emotional outbursts, but her control of her body and the space around her is stunning.
O'Connor is, literally and uncomfortably at times, a loose cannon of the first order. He alternately embodies optimism, social indignation and murderous rage, which keeps our focus on the personal in the middle of the political drama. That his change of moods may have been chemically induced, as Walker suggests in the final scene, doesn't excuse his action but widens the circle of blame.
While White maintains the same confident and commanding note he struck as Max in Adult Entertainment, Ferry takes his Donny several steps closer to the edge, the edge of corruption, despair, mental sickness and -- you have to see him to believe it -- comic adorability. In this bleak (even by Walker's standards) world, those comic touches that Ferry and the rest of the cast eek out are lifelines to an audience watching the end of their own civilization -- and slowly coming to the conclusion that there's not a damn thing anyone can do about it.
In rep with Adult Entertainment at the Factory Theatre until June 1. Check http://www.factorytheatre.ca for schedules and starting times. Tuesday to Sunday, $25 to $34. Sunday matinee, PWYC. 125 Bathurst St., 416-504-9971.