by AMY BARRATT

At the very end of Ugly, a show that Gravy Bath Productions did a couple of years ago, each audience member was handed a card with a few words on it that was meant to be a “key” to the play they had just seen. Certainly, it gave a person something to think about on the long ride home from the Segal, (or the ‘B’egal as we’re now supposed to be calling the second stage there), but even at the time I questioned whether it was necessary. Either the play should stand up without this last minute device, or the information on the card should somehow be conveyed dramatically.

In the Shade, the latest GB show, also at the Beegal (a better spelling, I think), reminds me quite a bit of Ugly. Both deal with relationships and the patterns we can’t seem to break. In In the Shade, the role of the explanatory note is filled by a sort of narrator, played by Shaun McComb.

Playwright Anthony Kokx has this idea he wants to convey: something about how cancer cells growing and changing in the body parallel the ways people grow and change in relationships. The idea is there in the script but it isn’t fully developed. Instead of finding a way to show us these connections, Kokx too often has the narrator just tell us about them.

This reminds me of the company’s Kali Yuga, which also featured a character whose principal role was to impart information, in that case about Eastern religions. You sense that McComb has a lot more to him than he’s allowed to show as this stiff, white-coated figure.

A standout in the cast of seven is Chris Masson, almost unrecognizable as the retarded brother from GB’s last offering, This Table. He has been given a role here that invites exaggeration, and he goes for it with admirable results. In the Shade, which Kokx also directs, has some nice visuals, and a few genuine moments, but the plot is thin and the text is just not ready to be performed.

With this careful, sombre production, the upstart little company seems to be indicating that it wants to grow up. Even the set-up feels more stodgy—instead of audience and performers sharing the capacious stage as they have for past GB productions, this time a section of seats and a part of the stage have been blocked off, but otherwise it feels like a typical evening at the subscription house. Forgive me if I miss the heady exuberance of Gravy Bath’s youth.

The Darkness

It may be almost Christmas, but the tone is far from jolly on our stages this weekend. The National Theatre School’s graduating class is presenting an adaptation of Crime and Punishment this week at the Monument National. Dostoevsky’s terrifying tale of the penniless student who plots to kill a “useless” old woman is directed by Alexandre Marine. Nightly at 8 p.m. until Dec. 17.

Dark Horse Theatre is presenting a new play called The Chamber, by local playwright Larry R. Lamont. Set in Japan, where the playwright used to live, it explores interracial relationships. Runs until Saturday, Dec.17, at 8 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 18, 2 p.m., at Geordie Space (4001 Berri, #103).

In the Shade runs through Dec. 17 at the Beegal (5170 Côte-Ste-Catherine), 540-0774

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