THEATRE: Easy on the decor
Prodigy makes the most with the least
from the McGill Tribune by Liz Perle, 4/4/06
I felt as if I were sitting in an alleyway. Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), the venue for Persephone Productions' play Prodigy, is a small, narrow room composed of brick walls and lined with cumbersome rows of folding chairs. In fact, it is vaguely reminiscent of a small, dark French café, and I half expected poets with berets and pretentious hand-rolled cigarettes to appear when the show began.
Instead, when the lights rose, the stage was bare save for a grand piano. After the show, artistic director Gabrielle Soskin explained that Prodigy is based on a novella written by acclaimed Canadian writer Nancy Huston. This particular dramatization was originally written in French, and Soskin asked Huston if she would translate it into English specifically for Persephone Productions.
Prodigy is a warm-and conspicuously French-story about mothers, daughters and a compulsive obsession with the piano. It is structured as a series of dramatic monologues alternated back and forth by the all-female cast. The tiny stage, in fact, held only three actresses.
The feisty grandmother, or "Babushka," is played energetically by Karen Cromar from a white wicker chair for the majority of the show. Lara, Babushka's daughter and the central character in the story, is given vivacity and passion by Nathalie Stechysin. In fact, she arguably performed a little too passionately: The subtle metaphors and humour in the script, which presumably would have been central elements of the French version, exploded violently as she belted out her lines. The "prodigy" of the show is the young Maya, Lara's innocent and animated 10-year-old daughter, played by Amanda Sargisson. She stood out as the only actress who captured the delicacy of the text, particularly in her response to her increasingly disturbed mother, while maintaining the character's charming naiveté.
One of the play's most creative elements was the set, which consisted solely of a grand piano, monopolizing the stage and cast. The actresses, consequently, had to manoeuvre themselves around it in scenes ranging from running outdoors in the rain, giving birth in a hospital and being relegated to a psychiatric facility. This design choice reflected the role of the piano in the lives of all three women, and how their identities revolved around their consuming passion for music. Their lives, in fact, were completely devoid of any masculine influence, every male character in the script appropriately represented on stage through computerized voice recordings. This lack of emotional and physical male presence in the women's lives contributed to the overwhelmingly sentimental and artistic female landscape of the story.
Although the plot of Prodigy was a little trite at times, this can easily be attributed to the editorial process associated with translation. The sounds of many words and phrases in the French language simply cannot be reasonably represented in English. In fact, perhaps Prodigy would be better suited for that French café after all.
I felt as if I were sitting in an alleyway. Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), the venue for Persephone Productions' play Prodigy, is a small, narrow room composed of brick walls and lined with cumbersome rows of folding chairs. In fact, it is vaguely reminiscent of a small, dark French café, and I half expected poets with berets and pretentious hand-rolled cigarettes to appear when the show began.
Instead, when the lights rose, the stage was bare save for a grand piano. After the show, artistic director Gabrielle Soskin explained that Prodigy is based on a novella written by acclaimed Canadian writer Nancy Huston. This particular dramatization was originally written in French, and Soskin asked Huston if she would translate it into English specifically for Persephone Productions.
Prodigy is a warm-and conspicuously French-story about mothers, daughters and a compulsive obsession with the piano. It is structured as a series of dramatic monologues alternated back and forth by the all-female cast. The tiny stage, in fact, held only three actresses.
The feisty grandmother, or "Babushka," is played energetically by Karen Cromar from a white wicker chair for the majority of the show. Lara, Babushka's daughter and the central character in the story, is given vivacity and passion by Nathalie Stechysin. In fact, she arguably performed a little too passionately: The subtle metaphors and humour in the script, which presumably would have been central elements of the French version, exploded violently as she belted out her lines. The "prodigy" of the show is the young Maya, Lara's innocent and animated 10-year-old daughter, played by Amanda Sargisson. She stood out as the only actress who captured the delicacy of the text, particularly in her response to her increasingly disturbed mother, while maintaining the character's charming naiveté.
One of the play's most creative elements was the set, which consisted solely of a grand piano, monopolizing the stage and cast. The actresses, consequently, had to manoeuvre themselves around it in scenes ranging from running outdoors in the rain, giving birth in a hospital and being relegated to a psychiatric facility. This design choice reflected the role of the piano in the lives of all three women, and how their identities revolved around their consuming passion for music. Their lives, in fact, were completely devoid of any masculine influence, every male character in the script appropriately represented on stage through computerized voice recordings. This lack of emotional and physical male presence in the women's lives contributed to the overwhelmingly sentimental and artistic female landscape of the story.
Although the plot of Prodigy was a little trite at times, this can easily be attributed to the editorial process associated with translation. The sounds of many words and phrases in the French language simply cannot be reasonably represented in English. In fact, perhaps Prodigy would be better suited for that French café after all.