There is a world which exists somewhere between the living and the dead, the real and the surreal, the mundane and the absurd. This is the world in which reside the characters of And So it Goes, George F. Walker’s latest work for the stage which just finished an extended run at the Factory Theatre. The subject matter of this work is difficult to navigate, as exemplified by the lackluster result of Walker’s exploration of his world.
And So it Goes | George F. Walker | Factory Theatre
And So it Goes tells the story of a family dealing with financial decline, weakening bonds and mental illness. Act 1 features mother Gwen (Martha Burns) and father Ned (Peter Donaldson) coping with their paranoid schizophrenic daughter Karen (Jenny Young) with the help of imaginary therapist Vonnegut (Jerry Franken). Yes, that Vonnegut. The Kurt one. Act 2 finds Gwen and Ned attempting to cope with the death of Karen (now a mentally stable ghost in her parents’ minds) while abandoning all concern for their personal well being. By play’s end they have resurrected their love for each other as they end up homeless on the street, losing everything but gaining everything through the power of their delusional minds.
Walker’s writing style was, early in his career, more terrestrial and certainly more faithless with his society. His East End Plays, first produced by the Factory Theatre more than twenty years ago, put on display the harsh lifestyle of the lowest classes of criminals living in what many consider to be East Toronto. With And So it Goes, Walker has found a new paradigm, bolstered by the heavy influence of Kurt Vonnegut’s sense of strange nihilistic hopefulness. Vonnegut’s works were a heavy influence on Walker’s script, though an audience unfamiliar with Vonnegut’s writing could certainly get lost in some of the references and allusions Walker employs. In all, what was missing was the rough-around-the-edges approach of some of Walker’s early work, the roughness of everyday life in the real world.
The direction of the piece only further cemented my belief that a writer should not direct his own work, certainly not on the stage. There must necessarily be a separation of artistic practices, as writers tend to be too precious with their words when directing, allowing ideas rather than character tell the story. Walker could not escape this trap, staging a lateral, uninteresting piece that was archaically slavish to the proscenium arch. With so much potential for creative staging concepts, Walker instead relied on lighting to indicate playing areas, on extended blackouts between every scene to change the sparse set. His script created a world between the earth and the mind but his staging was firmly grounded in the earth, the blackouts serving only to take the audience out of the story and the actors having to work very hard off the top of each scene to bring us back.
Putting two veteran Canadian stage actors in the two central roles was the best choice made by this production. Martha Burns was ethereally stunning as Gwen, a weary contempt transforming into hopeful abandon over the course of the evening. Peter Donaldson was at once goofy and dangerous as Ned, commanding the stage and filling the space with his powerful voice. His obsession with finding his daughter’s killers was understated and believable, his conversations with his daughter’s ghost heartbreaking. Jenny Young went a bit too far in the performance of her illness in Act one, going for cheap laughs rather than accurate portrayal, but was redeemed by her sweet and warm nature in Act two. Playing an historical figure is no easy role, and Jerry Franken did a fine job as Vonnegut, resisting the urge to play the man himself and instead playing the character conjured in the minds of the other characters.
It was the design that was the particularly outstanding aspect of this production. Shawn Kerwin’s set and costume designs were simple, rough and transformative. Costumes were static as well, but allowed enough simple movement with additional pieces to showcase the fundamental changes occurring within the characters. Locales switched seamlessly with sparse, stationary set pieces depicting a voyeuristic window to the outside world from the world of the play. Veteran lighting designer Rebecca Picherak aided in the changes of locale with a complex and well thought-out lighting plot which worked constantly to shift the audience’s focus over the vast stage of the Factory. Sound design and composition by John Roby was subversive, detailing a bustling cityscape and filling the space with life. Rhythmic devices of car horns, traffic and human shouts contrasted the mechanical with the mortal and served to contain the vast ideas of Walker’s text, bringing a much-needed sense of restraint to the entire production.
George F. Walker is certainly a preeminent Canadian playwright, though his reach slightly exceeded his grasp with And So it Goes. Excellent performances and extraordinary designs could not save this work from the grand scope which it tried, yet ultimately failed to exhibit. Terrestrial, city-bound issues of the lower-class are where Walker excels, and though he touched on points of financial hardship and the nobility of the poor, he became too preoccupied with the lofty concepts to which he aspired in the text. Let us hope that he continues to explore this world in the future, depicting the harshness of human life without striving for pretension in the world-between-worlds.
