The Best Brothers by Daniel MacIvor, presented by Prairie Theatre Exchange, October 17, 2013
Reviewed by Chandra Mayor
Using the word “best” in a play title is tricky. It raises the audience’s expectations. In the case of Prairie Theatre Exchange’s production of Daniel MacIvor’s The Best Brothers, we want the brothers in question to either be (or become) the best, or to at least be a spectacularly beautiful disaster. Unfortunately, this production offers neither spectacle. At best, The Best Brothers is okay.
Paul Essiembre and Carson Nattrass in The Best Brothers, writing an obit; photo by Bruce Monk
The show begins at the moment when middle-aged brothers Hamilton (played by Paul Essiembre) and Kyle (Carson Nattrass) Best each learn, via cellphone, of their mother’s accidental death. As they maneuver together through writing the obituary, planning the funeral, reading the will, and negotiating custody of their mother’s beloved dog, they also revisit unhealed childhood rivalries and wounds, and struggle to find the meaning and purpose in their lives. Nattrass and Essiembre also take turns performing reflective monologues in the persona of the (dead) mother, Bunny. Also, it’s a comedy. Also, it’s a bit of a mess.
Nattrass and Essiembre are both skilled and accomplished actors, and director Robert Metcalfe is a seasoned professional. All three work hard to make this play work, but the heavy-handed script doesn’t give them much to work with. The play can’t quite seem to decide if it wants to be broad comedy, played with over-the-top slapstick (as in the brotherly choking scene at the funeral), or if it’s really a poignant, sentimental piece with deeper messages about the meaning of life. In trying to be both at once, it succeeds in being neither.
The erratic slapstick undermines the credibility of the characters and their emotional journeys. Hamilton is supposed to be the accomplished Type A older brother, the one who always knows what’s best, yet his violent outbursts and preoccupation with whether his mother loved him ‘better’ or ‘harder’ than his brother aren’t funny so much as tiresome and juvenile. Kyle is meant to be the favourite younger brother, free-spirited and gay, but somehow these two things are conflated into glib superficiality; he is full of affectation, but weirdly without psychological affect.
Kyle’s emotions and humanness are sacrificed for the questionable comedic value of easy gay stereotypes without the skewering wit of true camp to make the tropes resonate or achieve greater depth. When he proposes catered sandwiches at the viewing we’re meant to laugh because, presumably, gay men are such impractical aesthetes; his total lack of sadness or grief while gleefully composing his mother’s obituary, however, comes across less as campy fun and more as sociopathy. Neither of these characters is very likable, but more to the point, neither is very believable.
Bunny’s character (as represented in dialogue and monologue) is also confusing and inconsistent. She is both the (presumably comedic) kooky aging socialite with too much money and just as many lovers, and simultaneously (and inexplicably) the tired cliché of the All-Knowing Wise Mother who, through dying and leaving the perfect bequests to her sons, finally allows these middle-aged Pinocchios to become real boys at last. The superficial twinkling of this Blue Fairy aura undercuts the real beauty of some of her monologues, and I was left wondering, uneasily, why the good mothers in our cultural imaginations are so often the dead mothers.
There are, however, some genuinely funny moments and lines in the play, and the audience laughs. Nattrass and Essiembre are at their best when sparring with each other, and each actor does his best to play up the tensions between the characters, often to great effect. The play’s homage to the redemptive powers of loving (and being loved by) one’s canine companions is expressed with tenderness and a lovely metaphor about seeing people’s hearts (in the form of their beloved dogs), even if this climax is overly neat, and disconnected from the play’s metaphorical structure of planets, suns, and architecture, astronomy and mathematics.
Janelle Regalbuto has created an evocative and deceptively simple set, beautifully lit by Scott Henderson; using minimal props, all of the play’s action takes place on and in front of a draped white cloth, onto which are projected slightly blurred photographs of various interior spaces and architectural floor plans. Danny Carroll’s original music is lovely, and helps the production achieve a more unifying flow than the uneven script can sustain on its own.
MacIvor is trying to convey messages of hope, that healing and love are always possible (even in middle age and beyond), and that despite life’s messiness and confusion, sometimes it is the simplest things that are the most powerfully redemptive. Each of the characters embark on emotional journeys through the play; the characters aren’t always written with the requisite emotional depth and coherence to make these journeys truly genuine, but Nattrass and Essiembre do their best with the script, and anyone with a sibling who has ever vied for parental attention and affection will recognize moments and emotions from their own lives, and will find something to laugh at.
The play isn’t quite realized, and probably could have benefited from a few more workshops to secure its footing and to release some of the heavy-handed messaging, allowing the characters’ own depths to lift and shine. Then again, that’s also true of most of us, especially when we find ourselves embroiled in each of our own sticky family dramas and dynamics; we could all use a bit more polish, coherence, and a chance to word things more authentically. Especially in the midst of our fights, funerals, and flaws, laughter itself is redemptive, and a good line is a good line. The Best Brothers isn’t the best play you’ll see this year, but it’s really and truly okay.
The Best Brothers presented by Prairie Theatre Exchange. Performances October 17 – November 3, 2013, 3rd floor Portage Place, 393 Portage Ave., Winnipeg MB.
Really and Truly OK
Columns
The Best Brothers by Daniel MacIvor, presented by Prairie Theatre Exchange, October 17, 2013
Reviewed by Chandra Mayor
Using the word “best” in a play title is tricky. It raises the audience’s expectations. In the case of Prairie Theatre Exchange’s production of Daniel MacIvor’s The Best Brothers, we want the brothers in question to either be (or become) the best, or to at least be a spectacularly beautiful disaster. Unfortunately, this production offers neither spectacle. At best, The Best Brothers is okay.
Paul Essiembre and Carson Nattrass in The Best Brothers, writing an obit; photo by Bruce Monk
The show begins at the moment when middle-aged brothers Hamilton (played by Paul Essiembre) and Kyle (Carson Nattrass) Best each learn, via cellphone, of their mother’s accidental death. As they maneuver together through writing the obituary, planning the funeral, reading the will, and negotiating custody of their mother’s beloved dog, they also revisit unhealed childhood rivalries and wounds, and struggle to find the meaning and purpose in their lives. Nattrass and Essiembre also take turns performing reflective monologues in the persona of the (dead) mother, Bunny. Also, it’s a comedy. Also, it’s a bit of a mess.
Nattrass and Essiembre are both skilled and accomplished actors, and director Robert Metcalfe is a seasoned professional. All three work hard to make this play work, but the heavy-handed script doesn’t give them much to work with. The play can’t quite seem to decide if it wants to be broad comedy, played with over-the-top slapstick (as in the brotherly choking scene at the funeral), or if it’s really a poignant, sentimental piece with deeper messages about the meaning of life. In trying to be both at once, it succeeds in being neither.
The erratic slapstick undermines the credibility of the characters and their emotional journeys. Hamilton is supposed to be the accomplished Type A older brother, the one who always knows what’s best, yet his violent outbursts and preoccupation with whether his mother loved him ‘better’ or ‘harder’ than his brother aren’t funny so much as tiresome and juvenile. Kyle is meant to be the favourite younger brother, free-spirited and gay, but somehow these two things are conflated into glib superficiality; he is full of affectation, but weirdly without psychological affect.
Kyle’s emotions and humanness are sacrificed for the questionable comedic value of easy gay stereotypes without the skewering wit of true camp to make the tropes resonate or achieve greater depth. When he proposes catered sandwiches at the viewing we’re meant to laugh because, presumably, gay men are such impractical aesthetes; his total lack of sadness or grief while gleefully composing his mother’s obituary, however, comes across less as campy fun and more as sociopathy. Neither of these characters is very likable, but more to the point, neither is very believable.
Bunny’s character (as represented in dialogue and monologue) is also confusing and inconsistent. She is both the (presumably comedic) kooky aging socialite with too much money and just as many lovers, and simultaneously (and inexplicably) the tired cliché of the All-Knowing Wise Mother who, through dying and leaving the perfect bequests to her sons, finally allows these middle-aged Pinocchios to become real boys at last. The superficial twinkling of this Blue Fairy aura undercuts the real beauty of some of her monologues, and I was left wondering, uneasily, why the good mothers in our cultural imaginations are so often the dead mothers.
There are, however, some genuinely funny moments and lines in the play, and the audience laughs. Nattrass and Essiembre are at their best when sparring with each other, and each actor does his best to play up the tensions between the characters, often to great effect. The play’s homage to the redemptive powers of loving (and being loved by) one’s canine companions is expressed with tenderness and a lovely metaphor about seeing people’s hearts (in the form of their beloved dogs), even if this climax is overly neat, and disconnected from the play’s metaphorical structure of planets, suns, and architecture, astronomy and mathematics.
Janelle Regalbuto has created an evocative and deceptively simple set, beautifully lit by Scott Henderson; using minimal props, all of the play’s action takes place on and in front of a draped white cloth, onto which are projected slightly blurred photographs of various interior spaces and architectural floor plans. Danny Carroll’s original music is lovely, and helps the production achieve a more unifying flow than the uneven script can sustain on its own.
MacIvor is trying to convey messages of hope, that healing and love are always possible (even in middle age and beyond), and that despite life’s messiness and confusion, sometimes it is the simplest things that are the most powerfully redemptive. Each of the characters embark on emotional journeys through the play; the characters aren’t always written with the requisite emotional depth and coherence to make these journeys truly genuine, but Nattrass and Essiembre do their best with the script, and anyone with a sibling who has ever vied for parental attention and affection will recognize moments and emotions from their own lives, and will find something to laugh at.
The play isn’t quite realized, and probably could have benefited from a few more workshops to secure its footing and to release some of the heavy-handed messaging, allowing the characters’ own depths to lift and shine. Then again, that’s also true of most of us, especially when we find ourselves embroiled in each of our own sticky family dramas and dynamics; we could all use a bit more polish, coherence, and a chance to word things more authentically. Especially in the midst of our fights, funerals, and flaws, laughter itself is redemptive, and a good line is a good line. The Best Brothers isn’t the best play you’ll see this year, but it’s really and truly okay.
The Best Brothers presented by Prairie Theatre Exchange. Performances October 17 – November 3, 2013, 3rd floor Portage Place, 393 Portage Ave., Winnipeg MB.