Queen Lear: driving miss jane

On my ever expanding list of topics for future PLANK articles there is one entitled “why are some reviews harder to write than others?” Queen Lear by Eugene Strickland, currently on at Presentation House and produced by Western Gold is proving to be a nightmare of a review to write. Why? Well, in part because I didn’t feel much of anything for this show. It is a show that could be comfortably produced in a church basement somewhere in the Fraser Valley, by an amateur theatre troupe (the type that the show gently mocks throughout) or at a regional theatre in say in 1956, the year that Shirley Broderick started her impressive career.

Broderick plays an eighty year old(ish), Jane, who was once a successful actress but has now found that the juicy roles have dried up for her. She’s finds work for herself in a strange, amateur/community theatre production of King Lear being presented with an all female cast. She is to play the lead role. I only know that she was a great actress once because the press pack told me. Otherwise I had no idea whether she had truly been a star of the theatre or whether she’d been a regular on the local community theatre circuit. Her world is “shaken up” – well, more gently intruded on – by a generic teenager who has been brought in to run lines with her. Jane has trouble learning the lines and the teenager, of course, thinks Shakespeare’s boring. You know what happens so I won’t go any further with the plot details. It’s basically Driving Miss Daisy but with a teenage girl instead of a black guy.

The fact that you already know what’s going to happen is part of the problem. In one sense, it doesn’t really matter that Queen Lear has absolutely nothing new to say – neither do I really – but I think it’s only reasonable to expect that a production will at least say what it’s got to say in an interesting or at least mildly diverting manner. Instead, we’re giving a weirdly rambling script that is composed of a seemingly endless parade of scenes which all begin and end in the same manner. Girl arrives, Girl leaves. Girl arrives, Girl leaves.
Arrivals are punctuated with the following sort of dialogue:

Hi

Hi

How are you?

I’m fine.

Are you sure?

Yes. What about you?

I’m okay. Are you sure you’re alright?

I’m sure but what about you?

I’m fine, really.

It’s just that we move into the theatre in three days.

We better get working on those lines.

My parents are about the same age as Jane. Having attended a number of shows with them over the years, I think I can imagine what they would have made of Queen Lear. They would have been delighted by the performances, laughed at some of the one liners but at some point on the way home they would have said something like “what was the point of that?”

Because, here’s the thing, my parents might be in their 70s but that doesn’t mean that they’ve turned into a pair of nostalgics yearning for a dappled past, obsessed by fibre in their diet and baffled by the younger generation. The truth is, they’ve always been obsessed by fibre in their diet. My parents are as curious and engaged in the world as they ever were. They follow what’s going on, have a cel phone, an Apple computer and rail against the current government(s) with, if anything, more anger than me.  Sure, they are now engaging in many of the issues that older people face – and some of them can be struggles – but it is not the thing that defines them.

So the question has to be why is Western Gold – a company devoted to producing work for mature audiences that will showcase older theatre artists – choosing to produce this sort of unadventurous fare? I’d liken it to a queer company producing a coming out play. Sure, they could but unless it tells that story in a profoundly new way, I’d imagine that most of their audience would wonder what exactly was going on.

For her part, Broderick does good work. Strictland quotes longish passages from Shakespeare and the highlight of the show is to hear Broderick giving a crystal clear reading of the text; it’s delightful and provides a jolt of beauty to the mundane proceedings. Jennifer McPhee as The Girl (aka Heather) is a newcomer, still enrolled in the Capilano University acting program and this is a promising start to her career. The super-talented Peggy Lee is onboard, playing cello in the corner. Why exactly there’s a cellist in the corner was not clear to me. I can come up with all sorts of justifications for the choice but none of them feel embedded within the, er, fibre of the work. Still, it’s cool to hear Lee’s playing.

The one thing that the cellist put me in mind of was of a Happening or maybe the Beat poets both of which started around the same time as Broderick’s career. This could have been an interesting reference back to when members of Jane’s generation were engaging in issues such as sex, drugs and eastern religions. But I don’t think this was the intent.

I wrote a review for White Christmas earlier this season where I basically said that the show was not intended for the likes of me. I guess I could say the same thing about Queen Lear. The only thing is, that it’s not for the likes of my parents either. And, as far as I know, they never attended a Happening.

Queen Lear continues at the Presentation House Theatre until April 10th. For more information wander over here.