Eternal Hydra: A Magnificent Beast

Touchstone Theatre’s West Coast premiere of Anton Piatigorsky’s Eternal Hydra is a magnificent and dangerous beast, weaving a labyrinth narrative of ambition, loyalty and questionable ethics. You will need both your brain and your heart to make sense of this non-linear play, but don’t be discouraged. It is well worth unraveling!

I ended up with a seat in the back corner, stage left of the thrust and I was pleasantly surprised to feel so included in the action. This production is skillfully staged, making full use of the space and a transformational set. Every now and again blank pages would catch the light and glare out at me from a supposedly full of scribblings notebook, but that is my only technical complaint. Set changes happened mysteriously under my nose, my eye was drawn to the next piece of action and voila! the locale had changed without my even catching a movement in the corner of my eye.

The rather dry frame story begins with Vivian Ezra, a scholar, presenting a famously undiscovered text (Eternal Hydra) to publisher Randall Wellington in the hopes of negotiating the terms of publication. Author Pauline Newberry, who has her own agenda, joins them in Wellington’s office and these three characters remain with us, providing a contextual tether as we tumble down a rabbit hole of flashbacks and fiction to reveal the truth at the heart of the Hydra.

Narrated largely by Vivian Ezra (played by Laara Sadiq) the production is off to a slightly bumpy start. Stylistically, narration can create a distance between the characters and the audience, keeping us ever aware that we are in a room watching a play. That said, I feel the frame story is necessarily distanced from the other scenes in the play and the “outside reality” allowed for a depth of perspective and analysis that a linear or single dimension reality plot would not have done. Each layer of narration took me to a deeper connection with the characters, building to a very powerful payoff in final moment.

The cast of four play a number of characters each and I loved the way the actors were able to both create distinctions and similarities between each one. Among other characters the infamous and elusive author of Eternal Hyrda, Gordias Carbunkle is played by John Murphy; at turns charming, revolting and vulnerable. The passionate Pauline Newberry is played by Cherissa Richards, the lonely yet driven Vivian Ezra by Laara Sadiq and the sometime magnanimous Randall Wellington by Andrew Wheeler. It is easy for academically inclined material to become so many talking heads on stage, but Katrina Dunn and her talented cast breathe vibrancy and life into a fascinating, but potentially verbose script. My only wish is that we could know a bit more about Vivian Ezra, I feel that her character is too complex for the brief snippets we are allowed to see and as a result I found it hard to relate to her as fully three dimensional. Such is often the curse of a main character narrator, Sadiq certainly made up for it with a feisty rendition of Gwendoyln Jackson. 

Good theatre stimulates conversation and the lobby of Studio 16 at the conclusion of Eternal Hydra was abuzz with questions, conclusions and debates. In my book that, more than anything, is the sign of a job very well done.

Eternal Hydra runs until November 11th at Studio 16. Tickets are available through the Firehall Box Office: firehallartscentre.ca or 604-689-0926.