2006 reviews of The Leisure Society
Going out: THEATRE
Dank secrets behind yuppie dream
MICHAEL HARRIS
Special to The Globe and Mail
Posted ON 07/04/06
The Leisure Society
***Written by François Archambault (translated by Bobby Theodore)
Directed by Diane Brown
Starring Scott Bellis, Colleen Wheeler, Robert Moloney and Hazel Venzon
Ninety minutes of child neglect and wife-swapping tickle the fancies of theatre-goers in The Leisure Society, a one-act morality play, sans morality.
The well-heeled couple at the centre of the action appears to reside in Yaletown (Yvan Morissette's precious set design captures the more-money-than-sense aesthetic often found there). On a baby grand piano, a bawling baby monitor is the only sign that the two are parents.
The mother figure is ominously named Mary (our first hint that a Quebecker wrote the original French version), played by the lovely Colleen Wheeler. She manages to be vulnerable and cruel in equal measure, her fair skin and copious red hair maintaining a stranglehold on the audience's attention.
As Mary and her husband Peter (a sweaty and nervous Scott Bellis) prepare for dinner guests, they bicker about Mary's new pregnancy, they have sex (more of a coughing fit than coitus) and they lamely discuss the possibility of a threesome (Mary read an article in Cosmo).
Playing the ultimate yuppie (half poodle, half person), Wheeler might easily overshadow the superb work done by her costar; Bellis is heartbreaking as the husband who won't ever measure up.
Then a diametrically opposite couple arrives to serve as foil to Mary and Peter's anal-retentive existence. Mark and Paula (Robert Moloney and Hazel Venzon) are postmodern lovers ("special friends" is the term they prefer) who embody the sort of free-floating affection that Mary and Peter, with their, so painfully lack.
Director Diane Brown manages to build an engaging momentum as the foursome work their way through a case of wine and inexorably edge toward an orgy. At the fever pitch, Wheeler steals the show as she drunkenly lists everything she ever wanted from life (all material goods), down to the amount of rum in her mojitos. It's a truly disgusting and awe-inspiring display.
Meanwhile, the nameless baby cries on the monitor, unattended.
As the quartet of lushes moon about the apartment, revealing more dank secrets the more they drink, the child's vain cries take on an inevitably significant timber. His tiny outrage becomes the perfect backdrop to Mary and Peter's own thwarted desires. The two convince us, through an emotionally intelligent set of manoeuvres, that the nuclear family is the one most likely to have a meltdown.
You could call it tragedy if it weren't so genuinely funny. And you could call it comedy if it didn't make you want to guzzle Drano martinis by the end. Let's just call it Québécois.
The Leisure Society, despite an uneven cast, is still the funniest play I've seen in months -- and the darkest. Ruby Slippers Theatre has produced something brave and worthwhile in this English language West Coast premiere.
The Leisure Society runs to April 9 at Performance Works, 1218 Cartwright St., 604-257-0366.
At Performance Works until April 9 
You'll laugh until it hurts
Tickets: 604-257-00366
Reviewed by Jo Ledingham, The Vancouver Courier
I shouldn't have worn mascara. But who knew that The Leisure Society would get tears streaming down my face. No, it's not that sad; it's that funny.
Ruby Slippers Theatre claims "sexy social satire is our forte." Add "smart" to that description and you've nailed it. Smart and sexy herself, Diane Brown directs this deeply twisted, darkly funny picture of modern marriage that makes George and Martha (Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) appear blissfully wedded.
Off the top, brightly lit and peering out over the audience, Mary (Colleen Wheeler) and Peter (Scott Bellis) respond to an unseen adoption agency interviewer asking about their marriage. "We love each other," they reply too brightly. Seven years married and, "We're happy," they chirp. "Still happy." They've applied to adopt a little Chinese baby girl. Why? Well, they have a grand piano (that neither of them can play) and they've noticed how first prize always goes to little Chinese girls in the competitions. So they want one. To go with the piano. Couldn't their infant son learn to play the piano? the voice asks. "Our son? I don't think so," says Peter, puzzled, slightly offended by the question.
So: happy Mommy, Daddy and Baby Boy? Not exactly. We never see him but the baby monitor is on and he never stops crying. Neither Mary nor Peter appears inclined to check up on him so she just switches the monitor off.
Mary and Peter are expecting company. Peter thinks her dress-displaying loads of cleavage-is "too cheerful" under the circumstances. It seems they're planning to break up with Mark, their best friend. But when Mark, recently divorced, turns up with a cute little tart (Hazel Venzon), it's a bit awkward.
No that awkward. Add booze and stir. It ends up a threesome in the bedroom with "aaahs" and "ohmigawds" piped into the living room via the baby monitor. Who's alone in the living room listening? See the show.
Robert Moloney, looking a bit wild and wolfish with startlingly blue eyes and scruffy hair, is Mark. His character just doesn't have a clue about anything. On the other hand, Paula (sassy little Venzon) is sharp. She knows what she wants-a threesome or a foursome, she's not fussy-and she knows how to get it. There's no "relationship" between Mark and Paula; they're just "f**k friends," they admit. They're not in love.
Mary and Peter, however, just might be. Or might have been. And that's when The Leisure Society gets sad.
But before that, prepare to laugh. Laugh at the startled, then bored look on Colleen Wheeler's face as Peter takes Mary from behind, the skirt of her too cheerful dress hoisted up. If you think you might be offended, blink because that's how long it takes Peter to finish and zip up. Laugh 'til it hurts when Wheeler, her character now drunk, dances the geekiest dance you've ever seen. She shudders, she jerks, she vibrates her booty. And then there's her laugh: "A-ha HA," she barks, nervously. "A-ha HA." Bellis, as Peter, looking like a whipped puppy, is a great foil for the spectacular Wheeler. His character is pathetic and ridiculous but when Peter wishes Mary and the baby would die in an accident so, as he sadly admits, "I'd be allowed to be lost. I'd be allowed to be angry. I'd be alive," a landmine goes off for many of us, the leisured society.
Written by Qu‚becois playwright Francois Archambault, translated by Bobby Theodore, directed by Diane Brown with lush sound design by Amos Hertzman and lights by Itai Erdal, The Leisure Society is subversively hilarious (until it isn't). Ruby Slippers Theatre could do some fundraising right after the show. Who wouldn't pay extra to see Colleen Wheeler shake it one more time or bark out one last "A-ha HA?"
Excellent acting highlights couple's dark life
Jerry Wasserman, The Province
Society horrifyingly good
Published: Tuesday, March 28, 2006
THE LEISURE SOCIETY
Where: Performance Works, Granville Island
When: Runs to April 9
Tickets: $20-$24 at 604-257-0366
Grade: A
Ever since the birth of modern drama with the realist plays of Ibsen and Chekhov, playwrights have used the stage to peek through the curtains of the family home and observe, behind the facade of middle-class normalcy, how many of us live, in the words of Thoreau, lives of quiet desperation.
American classics of the genre include Death of a Salesman and Albee's vicious tragicomedy Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? In Canada Michel Tremblay's Les Belles-Soeurs set the standard, revealing unpalatable truths about the lives of Quebecois women in the 1960s.
Now from Quebec, Francois Archambault's The Leisure Society gives us a lacerating X-ray of yuppie life in our own time. Diane Brown's near-perfect Ruby Slippers Theatre production alternates uproariously funny and gaspingly horrifying moments as it excavates the dark, desperate lives of a couple who seem to have it all.
Yvan Morissette's starkly handsome Yaletown apartment set suggests both affluence and sterility. The affluence of Peter (Scott Bellis) and Mary (Colleen Wheeler) is illusory but their sterility is real. Both qualities are captured in an exchange where Peter warns Mary not to miss a morning of work to have an abortion since their lifestyle is so dependent on their two incomes.
When we first meet them they seem slightly cartoonish, describing how they're adopting a little Chinese girl to join their baby boy. But Mary's forced laugh and Peter's nervous tics gradually become windows into the bleak reality of their marriage. The look on Mary's face as they have quickie sex before the arrival of their guests tells us volumes about their relationship.
The constant crying of the baby over a monitor provides the soundtrack to their family life.
Like in Albee's play, the other couple's presence strips away the illusions the characters hide behind. Old friend Mark (Robert Moloney), divorced and living the singles fantasy life, brings along sexy young Paula (Hazel Venzon). The long boozy evening ends in a sexual three-way and a series of awful revelations of how Peter and Mary really feel about their lives. Although we laugh a lot, it's very hard to watch.
The acting couldn't be better. Colleen Wheeler, maybe Vancouver's best actress right now, delivers another extraordinary performance. Her Mary is devastated and devastating, from her hilarious drunken dance, to a shattering monologue about how she has everything and nothing, to her primal scream when she realizes that Peter isn't capable of ending their misery. Bellis conveys Peter's humiliating ineptness with absolute clarity and conviction.
Moloney's Mark is perfectly creepy and, as young Paula, amazed at these middle-aged fogeys, newcomer Venzon holds her own beautifully. It's hard to imagine a more downbeat ending or a more satisfying version of this glance into the darkness next door. Not for the faint-hearted, The Leisure Society is horrifyingly good.
jerry.wasserman(at)vancouverplays.com ©
The Leisure Society
By Kathleen Oliver, The Georgia Straight
Publish Date: 30-Mar-2006
Colleen Wheeler and Scott Bellis deal with parenthood, sex, and an unexpected guest in The Leisure Society.
By François Archambault. Translated by Bobby Theodore. Directed by Diane Brown. A Ruby Slippers Theatre production. At Performance Works until April 9
The Leisure Society is a razor-sharp satire that often veers precariously close to crossing the thin line between hilarity and offensiveness. That's what makes this perfectly poised production so exhilarating to watch.
Montreal playwright Francois Archambault's corrosive script peels back the curtains on a seemingly ideal couple. Peter and Mary appear to have it all: they make lots of money, live in a gorgeous home, have a baby, and are seeking to adopt "a little Chinese girl" so that someone can learn to play the piano they've bought. But neither knows how to care for their child, they haven't had satisfying sex in ages, and they've invited their best friend, Mark (who's recently divorced and sowing his wild oats again), over for dinner so they can terminate their friendship—or maybe, on second thought, have a threesome—with him.
Things get complicated when Mark shows up with Paula, his 21-year-old fuck buddy, in tow.
Archambault's dialogue is brutally funny, and his deceptively simple plot is a marvel of comic engineering, as the characters' respective secrets converge in ever more outrageous revelations—and actions. Under Diane Brown's seamless direction, everything crackles giddily, darkly along.
Brown has assembled a dream cast. Colleen Wheeler expertly exposes the desperation beneath Mary's brittle veneer; she punctuates the character's random stabs at truth-telling with a forced, nervous laugh that's addictively funny. And just wait till she gets drunk and dances.
It's a must-see performance.
Peter is also tightly wound, but Scott Bellis reveals the sense of helplessness that drives his anxious social climbing. Robert Moloney finds the humanity in Mark's caddishness—no easy feat. And newcomer Hazel Venzon does a nice job of balancing Paula's worldliness and her innocence. Although she's young and sexually promiscuous, Paula is the only character with any grasp of the concept of personal responsibility.
Yvan Morissette's set beautifully captures the upscale elegance and austerity of Peter and Mary's world, with sleek, angular furniture and a view of the Vancouver skyline (a gorgeous projection by Tim Matheson) dominating the back wall. Amos Hertzman's sound design uses a simple conceit to echo the play's deeply ironic sensibility.
If you like your comedy bitter, a little scary, and beautifully executed, you'll love The Leisure Society.
Ruby Slippers Production Society
1398 Cartwright St., Second Floor,
Vancouver, BC V6H 3R8
Phone 604-602-0585
Fax 604-602-0562