Review: 'The Walls' as part of Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre's AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 PLAYS
Unique programming from Soulpepper Theatre in Toronto offers a series of audio plays from around the world under the title ‘Around the World in 80 Plays.’ This program does more than just feature ten international works – it includes online history of the various cultures each play reflects. Food, literature, music, and geography are all offered as part of a full study package of various countries. Artistic Director, Weyni Mengesha, writes that this is “a celebration of our global canon.” One early production is from Argentina’s prominent writer Griselda Gamboro – ‘The Walls’ from 1963.
Gamboro’s writing mainly comes from her passion for justice and political stability in a sometime unstable Argentina. ‘The Walls’ describes an unjust arrest and interrogation of a young man by two authoritative agents. Brought in under dubious questions about his identity, the young man is punished psychologically as he tries to understand his persecutors and their ambiguous statements. There is so much gaslighting, you can almost hear Charles Boyer’s footfalls stomping down the hallway. The “usher” and the “functionary” reverse and backtrack arguments until the young man loses a sense of reality and the aggressors become the victims. Language equivocates and becomes obscure as the prisoner is touted as a guest. Suggestions of torture and execution slice through just enough to panic the young man as the ending blurs into abstraction.
Translating a play into audio only is surely a difficult task but ‘The Walls’ is an excellent candidate. The set is stark enough to be easily described with a dull plain room and walls with no windows. The dialogue is prominent especially with the chilling, insincere voices of the interrogators. Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, as the Functionary, and Diego Matamoros, as the Usher, sound artificial and downright slimy as they do a poor job of playing good cop/bad cop confusing the young man further. Augusto Bitter, as the young man, counters with a soft naïve voice frightfully underscoring the consequences he faces.
Sound designer, Thomas Ryder Payne and his engineering team, create crystal clear sound that amplifies the actors’ personas. A brilliant background soundscape includes a never-ending white noise suggestive of the haze of bureaucratic authoritarianism. Prominent sound effects never overtake the narrative of the dialogue, but they subtly bolster climactic moments. Highlights include horrific cries of torture, sounds of chair legs scraping a bare floor or the ruffle of cash counted out for a bribe.
Gamboro’s themes are suggestive of Joseph Heller’s ‘Catch 22’. One can never win as language is ambiguous – cryptic. “Before” and “after” become the same. A hen house and lavender smell the same – if a victim has a black eye, he must have been the perpetrator. This Macbethian “topsy turvy” plays out as the victim is locked in but not locked in. Questions are answered with questions as the bureaucrats slowly create a choke hold on language and the young man’s future.
As Gamboro cries out for justice from an authoritarian purge in her country, she redefines the idea of walls themselves. There are many kinds of walls: buildings that close in, emotional walls, language walls, walls of time. The nature of being a passive victim within these walls is questioned. One should not just “wait, wait, wait” as the dialogue ends.
Soulpepper’s creativity is in full function during these trying times. As the popularity of audio books rises, surely there will be an audience for audio theatre as well.
‘The Walls’ – Griselda Gamboro. Translation – Marguerite Feitlowitz
Produced by – Soulpepper Theatre
Director – Beatriz Pizano
Sound Designer – Thomas Ryder Payne
Performers – Augusto Bitter, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, Diego Matamoros
Tickets are Pay-What-You-Choose, and audiences enjoy unlimited access to the audio drama from the premiere date until June 30, 2021. You will receive an email on April 28 with a link to log into your account and listen to an embedded audio file through your computer or device. Visit www.soulpepper.ca for further information.