NEWS

Sometimes, truly great art does get to be witnessed

Rebecca Northam and Bruce Dow in Sextet
Rebecca Northam and Bruce Dow in scene from Sextet.

Review
Sextet, written and directed by Morris Panych, Tarragon Theatre,
running to Dec. 14.

I cannot review Sextet without sharing the following confession, and an observation: I am 31 years old. The friend who joined me is 32. When the show was over nearly everyone in the first three rows, us included, cheered and gave the cast a standing ovation. To my eyes, both the cheerleaders in front and the ones standing behind me comprised the audiences’ younger ranks. The bulk of the older audience, while clapping, did not stand or cheer.

And that doesn’t surprise me. The titular sextet refers to a musical group, but the obvious pun is made early and often. For what it is, this is a terrific show, but it probably resonates more with younger viewers than Tarragon’s usually older crowd.

Writer/director Morris Panych’s production is the easiest type of play to review and the hardest to pull off: a tightly plotted comedy that provides consistent, believable characters with logical arcs and laughs aplenty. All I need do is describe the setup and assure you it has been executed well.

Our musicians — Harry (Damien Atkins), Sylvia (Laura Condlln), Mavis (Rebecca Northam), Gerard (Bruce Dow), Dirk (Matthew Edison) and Otto (Soulpepper veteran Jordan Pettle) — have been booked for a classical gig at a basement theatre near a run-down motel. A blizzard hits on the night of their arrival. It puts the show, Harry’s last, in jeopardy and heats the cabin fever already simmering among the six to a boiling point.

See if you can follow along: repressed Harry’s homosexuality is an open secret to everyone except his crush, the preening, clueless and heterosexual Dirk, who believes he’s competing with Harry for Sylvia’s affection, in spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that she’s a) not Dirk’s type and b) not attracted to him.

Meanwhile, much of the action is driven by the mysterious pregnancy of Mavis, whose retroverted uterus makes it difficult for her to conceive, and her husband Gerard, a flamboyant, occasionally cross-dressing violinist with an extra chromosome and a low sperm count who compensates by insisting on having an open marriage.

The group’s sixth member, Otto, is a rich man of indeterminate means who grew up without a father, and hopes to prevent his future offspring from sharing the same fate. When Otto learns Mavis is pregnant and that the child may be his, he decides they must raise it together, though she rejects his advances.

Sextet has a witty, endlessly quotable script, but I would not want to read it. Like good chamber music, it constantly requires each of the actors to add their voice to the stage at precisely the right moment.

On paper, it would be hard to keep track of who was saying or doing what to whom. Onstage, it’s organic: the setup described above is laid out in the first 15 minutes, and I had no trouble following its various paths — Will Harry’s urges get the better of him? Will Dirk learn the truth? Will Gerard? How did Mavis become pregnant anyway? — to their sublime conclusions.

The cast is helped by Panych’s staging. The realistic, yet stylized set is divided into six identical “rooms,” with comically narrow doors and fake walls that jut out just enough to suggest a division. Those divisions are frequently crossed by the characters, quite effectively giving the sense of everyone getting into each others’ space without the actors becoming distracting in pretending the walls exist or closing the doors and opening them every time they visit someone elses’ room.

Of course there was the occasional flubbed line, and not every joke landed. But over-all the play turned out to be a perfect rebuttal to what was my favourite line from Gerard: while lamenting the group’s likelihood of performing its last show, he reminds himself, “Don’t worry. No one’s even going to show up. Like all truly great art, witnessed by no one.”

He’s wrong, thankfully. And in the best possible way.