This Mortal Flesh: shorter than it seems

*This Mortal Flesh* presented by the "Firehall Arts Centre":http://www.firehallartscentre.ca/index.php and produced by "MachineFair":http://machinefair.ca/ opens strongly: a beautiful woman dressed in a slim and clinging red dress is on stage alone and engaged in an inner monologue, preparing herself for a sexual tryst with her lover. The seductive Tanya Marquardt (Holly) is hilarious in this sequence; she has the audience in the palm of her hand. The excellent and engaging Billy Marchenski (Harry) enters the apartment stage left with jacket over his shoulder, coming home from work.

He is obviously smitten by this woman and approaches her with intense anticipation whispering “Hi”. After a coquettish pause, she replies with an equally charged “Hi”. For the next 5 minutes their dialogue consists of exchanges of that single word while body language and eye contact play out a smoldering subterranean sexuality.

The central conceit of the play is revealed when Holly exclaims: “Watch out! Don’t touch me!” or “Careful! You almost touched me!” This prohibition builds increasing tension - I am thinking: “Why can’t she be touched? Why the hell can’t she be touched?”

I begin to wonder if she has some kind of a disease that would result in her being harmed if he were to touch her. A skin condition? Immunodeficiency? Then I wonder if there is something about her that could be harmful to him. What could that be? Is she toxic in some way? Is her skin poisonous? Then I start to wonder if she is simply nuts, or if they both are.

They talk about making love while wearing complex body suits, and I wonder if it is some kind of elaborate sexual game they are playing with each other.

There is a wonderful gag where Holly refers to articles in women’s magazines that explain about sexual relationships. She can quote them page and date. This is very funny as is most of this introductory sequence.

Here I am as an audience member thrown into an off balance state of bafflement and confusion. I am laughing and not knowing if I should. I am worried, intrigued, and skeptical all at the same time. I am thinking, “Isn't this wonderful! What a tremendous way to begin a play!”

Unfortunately the state of suspense and entrancement is short lived. The dilemma is resolved at about the 30 minute mark of this 2 hr play, and the solution is given.

I felt disappointed at that point. I felt short-changed. The sparring was done. The courting had happened. The foreplay was finished. The tension and intrigue of the opening scene had totally disappeared.

I guess I can give the solution here because actually the playwright has given it himself on this website: Holly is a Goddess. She is a real, existing, here-and-now Goddess. She is one of the Ancient Greek Goddesses of Love. She is like all the Gods and Goddesses in that if Harry touches her he will probably explode. He will die as many of her other 20 000 lovers in the past have died.

Now Holly has to prove to Harry (and to the audience) that she really IS a Greek Goddess, and this process takes up the rest of the first act. In the next phase of the play we are filled in with the back story that explains how a Goddess could be sitting in this room, having fallen in love with a mortal, and in particular, with Harry. The playwright seems to be concerned that if these questions are not answered completely and satisfactorily the play will not sit on a solid foundation. In the finally phase there is the discovery of a strategy by which these two can figure out how to consummate their love.

All of this is very complicated. To me it had the feel of an alternative science fiction universe where the rules are both absurd and complex, and where you really have to pay attention to all the intricacies to see how it makes sense. For me, the moment the solution was revealed, and this complex back story began, I lost my state of dissociation and imbalance. I moved from a place of both visceral and emotional connection with the two characters, into a mental state where I had to figure out the intricacies of this imaginary world. I quickly became bored.

It was not that it I couldn't accept or believe in the situation and the circumstances that were being presented. Not at all. I can suspend my disbelief long enough to allow a Goddesses to sit in a room with a mortal, and to believe they are both real. It wasn't that. It’s just that I wasn’t interested. I simply didn't care. A mental engagement is not nearly as interesting to me as an emotional one.

I also discovered pretty quickly that I do not care very much about the life and death struggles of Goddesses. Perhaps I should. Perhaps I should feel badly that I don’t care about them, but Harry said it himself, several times: Holly was not human, and she didn't know what it meant to be human. It was because she wasn't human that I couldn't find very much in the way of empathy for her.

I believe this could have been a good play. Its opening sequence is strong. The best plays start this way, throwing the audience off kilter and then gradually drawing them back towards some sort of resolution. But for me, as an audience member, the interesting part of the play was over once the solution to the opening dilemma was revealed. By making her real, the playwright stripped the Goddess of her power, and me of my trance.

It is true that the numinous presence of my own lover also seems to disappear once she becomes real in my eyes, perhaps after we have made love. At that moment I can actually see her and love her for who she truly is. The truth is that she is both a goddess and a human being at the same time, which is why I care about her.

The playwright, Andrew Templeton, is tackling here a topic which has tremendous relevance for the struggle of our lives. This is the kind of issue that needs to be addressed in our theater and in our literature. The Goddess of Love is a reality of the human soul. She creates marriages and relationships and families. She also destroys them, and can destroy us.

She is someone who deserves to have a play written about her.

She deserves a whole play.

_This Mortal Flesh presented by the Firehall Arts Centre, a MachineFair production; written by Andrew Templeton, directed by David Bloom, featuring Tanya Marquardt and Billy Marchenski. For more information whisk yourself_ "here":http://machinefair.ca/