Montreal, Quebec Online Review: 'The Game' to be applauded for tackling a new platform at NTS
Aaron Kropf, Associate Toronto Critic
As part of The New Worlds Festival, several members of the English section of the graduation classes at Montreal’s National Theatre School (in Directing, Play writing and Acting) presented their culminating project, The Game, via Zoom. The Game by Gillian Clark explores relationships, particularly the one between brother Lewis (Todd Houseman) and sister Captain Falcon (Patrick Jeffrey). The bulk of the production takes place at an old boys’ camp attended by Lewis and his friends in their younger years. They have returned to the camp for Lewis’ bachelor party. The party is crashed by Captain Falcon even though she was explicitly told not to attend by her brother.
Credit must be given to the whole team for taking a show that was to be performed in a theatre, to a new medium. Due to the current world pandemic, the project was reworked into an online experience. This required playwright Clark to rework the script and Angelica Schwartz, Director, to take a whole new direction with the piece.
Doing a show on Zoom with everyone in the comfort of their own space (company and audience alike) requires some creativity to deal with direct interaction between characters. This was done with ease by having the character say what they were doing and to whom. At first it was a little distracting but didn’t take long for this to be as natural to the flow of the show as if they had been performing the actions on stage. Set changes were done with green screen, quickly transporting the watcher from Captain Falcon’s apartment to the camp, as well as past events. The hurdles that needed to be overcome to bring the show to an audience during a pandemic were overcome with ease.
The company handled the many emotional ups and downs throughout the production, particularly Jeffrey as Captain Falcon, a 28-year-old young woman dealing with the struggle of a change in relationship with her brother. Drew Moor as Hubert, one of Lewis’ friends at the bachelor party, really tugged at the audience members’ hearts (as was expressed by a few in the chat that was fully functional during the show). The moment that Hubert’s secret was revealed to brother and sister was one not soon to be forgotten by many of the viewers. The cast was rounded out with Michael Bell, Ray Jacildo, Talijah Levine, and Savion Roach bringing to life the other members of the bachelor party with their own troubles.
The biggest struggle in this production was the fact the characters were not particularly endearing, coming across as the stereotypical guys, being loud, obnoxious, and vulgar for the sake of being vulgar. They were caricatures of frat boys that were so extreme I couldn’t imagine any of them as real people. That did change for a few of them when they met their eventual downfall in the production, namely Hubert (Moor) and The Bastard (Bell). This was a positive accomplishment for the playwright and actors to overcome in the end. Clark created a compelling story of relationships that are so close yet miles apart. A theme that was felt by those attending this production, we all felt the closeness of having shared a common experience while sitting our homes across this vast nation.
To tackle the challenges of bringing a show from the stage to a whole new platform should be applauded, especially with the skill in which it was done in The Game. It would be wonderful to see this type of production developed further. Stories told through this medium could help bring stories across our country and bridge the many divides in Canada.
Both live performances of The Game are sold out. If you weren’t lucky enough to get access the opening or closing performance, the National Theatre School recorded the performance which will be uploaded to YouTube.