Prophecy

Impossible Mongoose—One88

This play is so remarkable one hardly knows where to start. To touch on all the splendid features of it would require a long review. So for the moment here are some almost-random comments:

In awarding it 5 stars CBC was under-rating it.

Several hours later it still feels as if one’s entrails are littering the floor at Venue 29.

A terrifyingly powerful play, performed by Carmen Neuwenhuis and directed by Corben Kushneryk. It focuses on four women of Troy during the Trojan War—Cassandra, the dead-on accurate prophet whom no one believed, her mother Hecuba, queen of Troy, her sister-in-law Andromache, and half-sister Briseis (with a few glimpses of Helen of Troy). We look at these events from a women’s perspective. Not a pretty picture—and as Ardern herself has remarked, there’s no catharsis in it. It’s vivid, savage realism. One long shriek of pain and rage. But, being realism, it weaves in gentleness, warmth, and comedy as well. The writing and acting of Briseis’s introduction to the not-unkind warrior Patroklos is simply charming.

Some of the best of the best parts are when one character comments on other people—illuminating them with sharp clarity. Hecuba’s remarks comparing her foppish son Paris (principal provoker of the war that brought catastrophe to Troy), comparing him unfavourably with a hat, are hilarious.

Performer Carmen Neuwenhuis and director Corben Kushneryk are remarkable. Neuwenhuis’s shifts of persona from Cassandra to iron-hard Hecuba to the crushed and terrified Briseis to pious and repressed Andromache, and to the mincing Helen, are marvellous. The shifts are helped by slight costume, cosmetic, and location changes (and the set-pieces are all ordinary everyday objects), but this actor has a great ability to change her presence. And as for her projection and power—well, I won’t tell you to get ready to duck, since you’ll find yourself doing that by reflex.

I did think the play could be improved if there was a more obvious indication the actor has shifted roles when she makes the first switches to her several characters. For instance, for a few moments you think Cassandra’s talking about her son when the actor’s actually shifted to Queen Hecuba who is telling us about HER son. It’s confusing if one knows who these characters in Greek myth are—if you don’t, it must be disorienting. 

The audience seemed very attentive through the whole hour.

Somehow Ardern’s got her imagination so inside Greek tragedy that she’s actually written one.  

One doesn’t say such things. But it does need to be said. Ardern’s passage on the fate of Andromache’s and Hector’s son Astyanax actually improves on Euripides.

With this play, this author takes another step toward the Governor-General’s Award league—if it doesn’t bring her there already.

The play brings things home to us. I won’t tell you how it ends, but I’ll just say—we, the audience, sat there stunned.

To borrow a phrase, Prophecy is coming FOR Edmonton next month.

Kevan Bowkett