I should preface this by saying that I am not a theatre critic.  I am a theatre artist who is critical of theatre.  This is an important distinction to make when writing about a show, especially when reviews are frequently viewed as judgments without appeal (Should one review be sufficient to condemn a production?).  I prefer to play my part in commenting on theatre as part of the jury; what follows are just my impressions and all deliberations are welcome. 

Praxis Theatre’s latest production, Stranger, premiered Friday night at The Theatre Centre to a sold-out (and then some) crowd.  Derived from the famous existential novel L’Etranger by Albert Camus, Stranger follows a man, Meursault, from the death of his mother through his trial and condemnation for the murder of an Arab man on a beach.  I recall enjoying L’Etranger in high school, despite the fact that “existential” generally leads to discussions that cause my eyes to glaze over, but I am more inspired by this story about confronting an absurd world after watching what the talented team from Praxis does with it. 

The narrative in Praxis’s retelling is broken up, reordered, to take us through events in Meursault’s past as they occur (or as he is reminded of them) within his trial.  The fluidity with which the story and the scenes move from one to the next has an effortlessness to it that is deceptively difficult to achieve. It is stream-of-consciousness theatre at its best, aided by a brilliant staging in which the action courses up and down the alley between two sides of an audience.  In an instant, we are transported from a court room to a beach to a movie theatre and back to the courtroom, which we never really left.

Stranger is breathtaking, too, in its simplicity; it reinforces the idea that all theatre needs to exist is artists and space.  There is nothing about the production that seems superfluous and what little is used (props, lighting, etc.) is done to devastating effect.  One of the most enduring images to me is the shadow cast by the railings of the balcony onto the stage below:  prison bars in light across the floor.  No less thrilling are the many distinctly different characters created by a cast of six using little more than a pair of glasses, a hat, a shawl, a collar, and the occasional unbuttoning of a shirt.  As an actress, it was fascinating to watch each performer get his/her opportunity to shine. 

In the end, the real triumph of Stranger is in never having lost sight of what the show was meant to serve in the first place, which is the story.  Every aspect of this wonderfully cohesive production, from staging to props, to performance, lends itself to the fact that “ultimately, [their] story is about an unconventional hero who, without heroic pretensions, agrees to die for the truth.”  It is this story that is the real star and, while I don’t mean to pronounce judgment, this show, ultimately, shouldn’t be missed.

Posted: January 27th, 2009 under Brittney's Blogs.
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