>>REVIEW
THE OVERCOAT
Runs until May 5
Theatre Calgary
Max Bell Theatre (Epcor Centre)
Joining in the chorus of praise for The Overcoat almost feels like saying nothing at all – an especially appropriate condition for a play whose wordless storytelling has set it apart as a unique hybrid between dance and pantomime. Since its premiere in Vancouver 10 years ago, the play’s Vancouver Playhouse and CanStage productions have both earned raves across the county.
So how can a silent production make such noise?
Created by Morris Panych and Wendy Gorling, the massive production features 22 actors moving silently through an adaptation of legendary Russian realist Nikolai Gogol’s short story of the same name. Following its nameless protagonist through the daily humiliations of his mundane white-collar job, The Man eventually finds salvation in the form of the play’s eponymous overcoat – a fabulous addition to his otherwise drab life.
But beyond the play’s simple beauty and allegorical story is, I think, a single resonant theme that I can only assume has something to do with my own sad affliction, a tale I feel that you and I, reader and reviewer, may just now be comfortable enough to share with each other.
A deep breath and here it goes: I don’t understand dance and never have.
Not only am I completely inept on the dance floor, not only do my feet move with the kind of awkwardness that actually mocks rhythm, but I sit complexly slack jawed when genuinely fantastic dancers take to the stage.
"Look at those splits!" I might think for a moment, or, "Joints do not bend that way, and yet they do here! Frightening and fabulous!"
But in a few moments my mind begins to wander, trying to find some semblance of order in the rapid succession of jumps, kicks and contortions playing in front of me. A few failed attempts to impose a story later and my mind has completely wandered off, perhaps pondering Animal Planet’s Puppybowl, or the question of whether Captain America is really dead at all.
Then, like a dancer shattering his ankle on a poorly placed yoga mat, all that ambiguity falls before the total clarity of The Overcoat. A "movement" piece, true, but in its own way still as true to the beauty of movement as any dance.
Save for the occasional flashback, the play’s action is a straight line, a narrative of complete literality spanned by the play’s lead, Peter Anderson. Like the exaggerated movements of its players, emotions play wild and wide across the actors’ faces, evoking deliberate comparisons between the hyperbole of silent movies and the play’s own filmic style. From his home in a boarding house to the dull grind of his generic office job, from a sweatshop behind a tailor’s to the seedy streets of the city – The Overcoat draws its world in unmistakable sharp lines.
The Man’s landlady swoons for her frumpy tenant and withdraws in scorn when he rejects her, his co-workers play cruelly with his tattered overcoat, and his supervisor’s stingy praise is drawn in the literal broad sweeps of approving pen strokes. Even the introduction of the story’s titular overcoat is executed with a dreamlike waltz between man and possession, demonstrating The Man’s infatuation for the garment that promises him a better life. In every moment the play fills itself to bursting with the sheer intensity of its central arc, even occasionally adding tangential stage business that only serves to flesh out the already robust sense of Gogol’s grim world. Along with the swell of the play’s score, an agglomeration of pieces by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, the rich texture of the play’s movement and Alan Brodie’s lighting design form a striking picture of an allegorical cityscape.
I don’t understand dance, and I suspect that no small number of satisfied audiences across the country harbour this same secret shame. So, along with the swell of praise for The Overcoat, I can only add a pair of words that, in the greater context of impenetrable dance, feel as liberating as an entire script: I understand. |
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