Dangerous Corner: narrative experiment

For a generation that believes that M Night Shyamalan invented the trick ending, the Vancouver Playhouse has resurrected a modernist narrative experiment that proves that story-telling trickery has been with us for a long time.

As the first paragraph would indicate, it’s almost impossible to talk about the interesting elements of Dangerous Corner without revealing how the piece itself works. Not that this 1932 play by JP Priestley has a final, unexpected plot twist (although it does follow the template of a detective mystery, with the mystery revolving around the apparent suicide and strange behaviour of Martin, a character who never appears on stage). Rather it is how the storytelling unfolds that provides the thrill. Thrill, that is, if you’re a script-nerd like myself.

If you’re planning to see Dangerous Corner and don’t want to have your experience undermined, you will want to look away in a moment. Before you go, I should say that as problematic as this old chestnut is (it creaks loudly in places), it is hard to imagine it being any better served than by director Bill Dow and the phenomenal cast he has gathered. With actors Jennifer Clement, Vincent Gale, Charlie Gallant, Anna Galvin, Anastasia Philips, Tom Sholte and Christine Wells, watching this play is something akin to watching one of those Robert Altman movies where every role is cast beautifully and your jaw drops at the talent on display. If you want to provide evidence that Vancouver can muster big-league acting performances, all you need to do is point to this production.

Now, if you are going to see the play, run away.

Okay, if the rest of you are settled, I’ll continue. I called this play a “modernist narrative experiment” and I think that’s about right. Around the time that James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and their ilk were doing their narrative trickery, Priestley seems to have been doing similar explorations on stage. For most of its narrative life, Dangerous Corner is really an Agatha Christie mystery made more profound by its attempt to explore human psychology instead of “who done it”. In effect, all the characters “done it” and how their doings are inter-related is the puzzle that the play solves for us. The trick comes in that the play ends with a re-setting of the clock to the beginning and the opening five minutes of the play are repeated. With the knowledge we’ve gathered about the characters during the previous two-hours of stage traffic, we naturally hear things differently this time. Although many of the images associated with this reveal are a bit clunky and on the nose (letting sleeping dogs lie being the overarching metaphor), the trick works beautifully. It is also nice to have an opportunity to rehear the opening of a play, the sequence which is always the most notorious for playwrights to deliver and for audiences to hear.

So the trick works well, what about the rest of the script, where most of the lived experience of the play has to exist. Unfortunately the play comes up short, despite the best efforts of the cast. The first half drags, particularly the first act where we have endure endless prattle about a cigarette box, which turns out to be, a vital Christiesque plot-point. This is then coupled with an inter-related mystery of 500 pounds that has gone missing. The main driver behind the unfolding of both mysteries is Robert (Gale) but because we don’t really care about the characters at this point (in fact, ever) we aren’t really that interested in who took the money and who gave the cigarette box. It’s a bit like listening in on six wealthy strangers arguing over who owes who $1000.

Despite having an outstanding cast to give them life, the characters simply don’t grip us. This is even more remarkable, when you consider that one of them, Gordon (Gallant), reveals part way through that he’s gay. What is interesting for us sitting in 2010, is just how casually this information is imparted to the other characters and how they take in their stride without missing a beat (well, this is the English middle-classes that we’re talking about, so perhaps it’s not surprising after all). While there is some pleasure in seeing how a 1930s playwright dealt with this issue, there is nothing in of itself that is particularly interesting about Gordon (although he is given to petulant outbursts – thankfully, Gallant keeps these grounded and fuelled with anger rather than what I fear might have been meant to be moments of hysteria). Equally eye opening for many, I’m sure, is the idea of Martin, a bi-sexual, drug-taking libertine of the type that many believe to have been invented in the late 1960s. Again, Martin, conceptually, is compelling because of the context not so much in what he does – which we never see in any event.

All of the characters have reveals like Gordon’s. Knobber is sleeping with what’s her name and Bunty has stolen money from the firm and Bunny has been in love with what’s his nuts for simply ages. This is one tightly-knit group of friends and family, who seem hell bent on keeping their love and sex-lives within very tight confines (kind of like Friends, I guess). You’d think at least one of them would be screwing the chauffeur or maid. Despite the parade of life-changing reveals, the characters remain under-control, unflappable and awfully British. So does the writing until Priestley and one of his characters cut loose with a remarkable monologue delivered by an unravelling Robert. Gale does fantastic work here and the language suddenly fizzes with ideas and images that still feel fresh and relevant – so fizzy in fact they almost seem to belong to another play. This is, presumably, the ultimate reveal of the entire proceedings and, again, very British in providing that explosion of catharsis that the Middle Class seem to be so in need of.

One intriguing aspect of this production was just how much laughter there was, including one moment where one of the characters states: “this is not a melodrama”. Of course, to our ears it comes awfully close and I did wonder whether contemporary audiences of Priestley would have laughed quite so hard and at quite the same places. Dow and his performers are smart enough to see where the humour is – intended or not – and exploit it expertly, particularly Sholte who has some great moments. Phillips also does great work and gives depth, and believability, to Betty’s frustration at not being taken seriously.

In truth, Dangerous Corner isn’t a melodrama but a murder-mystery and like most murder-mysteries, it remains largely in an arid, perceived rational place (Robert’s outburst, of course, the main exception). Like a detective story, the main objective seems to be to identify various characters as “types” that we are then expected to analyze in turn. I guess people derive comfort from putting people into these boxes, where behaviour can be explained, but ultimately it is emotionally removing and so much of the experience of Dangerous Corner is not unlike watching The Mousetrap.

Dangerous Corner, a Vancouver Playhouse production. It runs until May 22nd. For more information go here.