by David French
Directed by Ted Dykstra
A Soulpepper Production
at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts
June 24-July 24, 2010

   In the second-half of David French’s satire on Canadian theatre and the people who make it, all external action on stage stops while the boozy leading man Patrick reads aloud a long review of the play-within-the-play in which his brittle leading lady Jessica is subjected to caustic criticism. Despite the bitchy fun, this is a structural flaw, as well as being implausible, for how many actors would ever claim t read newspaper reviews of their work, much less out loud to the evident outrage of one of their own? If I could get a dollar for every Canadian actor or actress who pretends not to read reviews, I would be wealthy. However, there are many other things in this onstage and backstage comedy that crackle with wit and trenchant cultural criticism once it gets beyond the long first scene that (with minor adjustments) could have come right out of one of French’s Mercer plays. For instance, Jessica, the stage diva who has returned to Canada to work on a show for six weeks after having been away for two years in New York and London, is a mirror for all those expatriate actors who make their reputations and fortunes abroad and think of Canada as a stopover or refuge when they are out of work abroad. Although Diane D’Aquila is physically compromised by a rolling walk, she is splendid in her distemper, trading acid jibes with C. David Johnson, whose Irish-Canadian Patrick is in fine high dudgeon over her unfair privileges as a guest actress.

   French’s play has been around since 1979 and it stands as one of the best backstage comedies in English (Michael Frayn’s Noises Off being probably the greatest farce on this subject). Jitters was inspired (at least in part) by French’s earliest experiences as a developing playwright at the relatively young Tarragon Theatre, and the Soulpepper production, directed by Ted Dykstra with evident relish of the gold dust lying in the veins of entertaining clichés, pays homage to Bill Glassco, Charmion King, and Richard Monette by inscribing their names on walls and doors backstage in Patrick Clark’s revolving set. The script, too, shows an accurate reflection of certain realities in Canadian theatre. As gruff but true Patrick cracks, where else but in Canada could you be “a top-notch actor all your life and still die broke and anonymous”? At one point, Jessica remarks very incisively: “Our sense of ourselves is so tentative.” Dykstra puts his tongue firmly in cheek when he has Mike Ross, who plays the nervous, humiliated young playwright, made up to look remarkably like Michael Healey, one of our leading playwrights.

   Jitters does farce good service when it has a character locked helplessly in a toilet and unable to go on stage into the play-within-the-play or when it has the anxious young fictional playwright pressed into service in place of the young male hunk who shows up late and dead drunk before passing out. The comedy is filled, of course, with recognizable and extremely risible theatre types: a harried director (Kevin Bundy) who tries to keep a lid on his two volatile leads; his young assistant (Sarah Wilson) who gets more than professional attention from him; a young actor (Noah Reid) whose talent is more in pectorals and beefcake than in histrionics; a front of house manager who stays calm and efficient (Abena Malika); a stage manager (Jordan Pettle) who is a slender tyrant; and an actor (Oliver Dennis) who can’t memorize his lines even as he complains about his squeaky shoes and ill-fitting costume.

   The cast is generally first-rate, with special kudos going to Bundy for his life-size realism as the director, Ross for his mixture of umbrage and humiliation as the young playwright, Pettle for his backstage martinet in a moustache, and, best of all, Dennis for his side-splittingly funny “seasoned veteran” of hysterical anxiety.    

photo: Cylla von Tiedemann

pic (L-R): Diane D'Aquila, Kevin Bundy, Noah Reid, Oliver Dennis, C. David Johnson, Sarah Wilson, Jordan Pettle in "Jitters:



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