WHAT A WEALTH of talent resides in the three women behind the Tarragon Theatre’s latest play Drowning Girls. Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson and Daniela Vlaskalic are to be applauded for a stunning and unforgettable production.
This exquisite and profound play is thrilling even before the show begins: three old-fashioned bathtubs — each half filled with water, shower heads above — sit equidistant on the otherwise empty, checkerboard-tiled stage. The lights dim, and when they come up, we see three young women submerged in the water.
They suddenly all burst up, totally out of breath and gasping horrifically, as does the jolted audience. It may be the most striking opening of any play in decades. The play (a mere 75 minutes with no intermission) maintains a consistent level of suspense to the end (Who drowned these three women?), but of course, like any good work of art, it is far more than the sum of its wonderful parts. This play is not about drowned women alone, any more than King Lear and Oedipus Rex are about lousy family relations.
Indeed, I can state without any reservations that The Drowning Girls shows its audience more about what it was like to be a woman in England (and the U.S. and much of Europe) in the 19th century or in 21st century Afghanistan under the Taliban for that matter, than the reading of a hundred essays.
The play is wonderfully poetic, almost like a Greek tragedy, as the three women play more than a dozen roles each, both male and female, finishing or echoing each other’s sentences. The visual metaphors are ubiquitous and perfect: their wedding bouquets become scrub brushes; the water which often pours over them from the shower heads becomes rain then tears. Other props are used in equally creative, inventive ways. This is live theatre at its best.
The Drowning Girls is playing at the Tarragon Theatre (www.tarragontheatre.com) until Nov. 15.
Also this month, local performers David Hein and Irene Carl’s My Mother’s Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding opens at the Panasonic Theatre.
Lauded by critics, when in premiered at the 2009 Fringe of Toronto Theatre Festival this past summer, there is no doubt that the hour-long Fringe production of MMLJWW has changed a great deal for the big remounting at the Panasonic. After all, the production comes from the humble confines of Bread & Circus, an out of the way spot hidden in Kensington Market.
Will Jews, Wiccans, gays and/or straights be offended or delighted? Critics can only speak for ourselves. But I can say one thing with certainty: seeing productions like these grow out of Fringe festivals is a very laudable thing, and I congratulate David Mirvish.
