Despite its winning both the Toronto
SummerWorks Festival’sBest Play and
Outstanding Ensemble Awards, Alan Dilworth’s The Unforgettingstrikes me as inchoate and
barely effective. The ever-resourceful Downstairs Cabaret Theatre imported this
offbeat drama and, because it runs less than an hour, added Canadian folksinger
Claire Jenkins with Andrew Penner from the play’s cast to perform a
mini-concert after an intermission following the play.
A commanding presence,
Penner was ironically the most effective player in The Unforgetting, although he is barely onstage and has almost
nothing to say. On DCT’s opening night, the two actors who carry virtually all
of the drama seemed to misjudge the necessary projection and were sometimes
inaudible only 20 feet away.
But Dilworth’s script is
also none too clear in projecting its basic situation. Only a line or two
clarifies the setting in Canada during the ’30s, when the Depression caused
many young men to travel across the country by rail, desperately looking for
work.
One such person, played by
Penner, shows up at the home of a young heiress and her husband, a doctor, and
almost tells them something that almost lets them know a terrible secret about
the wife’s millionaire father, who has just died. Their shocked response and
irresponsible actions thereafter almost clarify what happens to the
catalyst-stranger as well as what they finally decide to do.
Patrick Robinson is
emotionally telling as the well-meaning young husband trapped by circumstances
he can’t control. Maev Beaty must have had an off night, because I found her
young heiress to be appropriately spoiled and unthinking, but generally dazed
and unclear about why she did or said anything.
The play apparently has
satirical and serious comment to make about both social interactions and the
morality of personal decisions that are affected by economically trying times.
Maybe subsequent performances will communicate that material more strongly.
The Unforgetting,written
and directed by Alan Dilworth, plays at the Downstairs Cabaret Theatre Center,
540 East Main Street, through November 28. $21. 325-4370,
www.downstairscabaret.com
This article appears in Nov 17-23, 2004.
