NEWS

Tarragon’s latest is often funny, always witty, occasionally piercing examination of privilege

Cast of Cake and Dirt
LISTEN TO THIS: Scene from Cake and Dirt, now playing at Tarragon Theatre Mainspace. From left, David Storch, Laara Sadiq, Maggie Hukulak, Patrick Kwok-Choon, Maria Vacratsis and Bethany Jillard.

REVIEW

Cake and Dirt, by Daniel MacIvor, directed by Amiel Gladstone, running at Tarragon Theatre’s Mainspace to April 15.

Near the end of Cake and Dirt, which officially opened at the Tarragon Theatre on March 11, something I half-dreaded would happen did, and I was so shocked I kept mouthing to myself: “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.”

At least, I thought I was mouthing to myself. The person sitting next to me glared at me. I promptly bit my tongue.

The characters in Daniel MacIvor’s new Yorkville-set dark comedy — persons of privilege, all — would have kept whispering, believing nothing more important than what they had to say.

“Was it my cake?” Maggie Hukulak’s upper-class divorcée, Bryn, repeatedly asks her Greek housekeeper, Nina (Maria Vacratsis).

Hukulak’s delivery expertly conveys the reason for Bryn’s anger: as host of her ex-husband’s 50th birthday party the night before, it’s critical her guests believe she baked the cake herself, from her own recipe. Everyone prefers Nina’s recipe, of course, and knows that she baked it anyway, but Bryn would prefer her housekeeper perpetuate the lie.

“We need to leave the city,” Bryn’s ex-husband, Jeff (David Storch), repeatedly tells his second wife, Naline (Laara Sadiq), in response to her repeated questions of whether he is cheating.

“Was there money?” everyone asks Jason (Patrick Kwok-Choon), known as “Councillor Flip-Flop,” both for wearing flip-flops to City Hall and for approving the conversion of a nearby greenspace into a concrete-shelled urban square.

Jason repeatedly denies money was involved, of course, but if there’s anything these characters are better at than self-expression, it’s self-delusion. Or as narrator Riley, the 25-year-old daughter of Bryn and Jeff, puts it: “Everybody’s a witness, but nobody’s paying attention.”

The councillor unwittingly illustrates this best when he articulates the play’s title: “If all you’ve eaten in your life is cake, you know s–t when you taste it.”

Needless to say, he doesn’t.

The Yorkville neighbourhood isn’t called by name, but for residents of Toronto references to the downtown core and town square make it perfectly clear.

Like many of MacIvor’s plays, Cake and Dirt is probably an enjoyable read, and would likely benefit from multiple viewings. Case in point: several events in Act I, which takes place the morning after the birthday party, are referenced during the party itself (in Act II) long after the audience might have forgotten. The most obvious, such as some business involving earrings, are highlighted by director Amiel Gladstone’s staging, but others are likely to sail over your head.

At other moments two characters will talk over each other, neither of them saying anything that remotely relates to what the other person is saying. It can be headache-inducing, though in Gladstone’s and MacIvor’s defense, it was probably meant to be.

Much of the play’s humour relies on callbacks, such as Jeff repeatedly calling the councillor a “squirrel” in the first act, which pays off in the second when Jeff drunkenly tells him a tale of the perfect work of architecture — a robin’s nest made of mud and twigs, with oval blue eggs — that was thoughtlessly destroyed by … a squirrel.

I laughed uproariously. No one else in the audience did.

In fact, the show as a whole is more witty than funny, drawing fewer laughs than I would have expected from such rapid-fire dialogue.

I’m inclined not to blame MacIvor. Having interviewed him beforehand, I know Gladstone took a more “west coast calm” approach to the material than he would have. I wonder what MacIvor, himself an accomplished director, would have done with it.

But none of these caveats detract from what is, at heart, an often-funny, always-witty, occasionally-piercing examination of privilege well worth the price of admission. Like much of MacIvor’s work, it illustrates surprisingly dark truths while making you laugh.

I loved it.