by AMY BARRATT

There’s a scene in the play Tecumseh As a Doorstop where a Montrealer in New York tells his girlfriend—also Canadian—that she can return home now; since she has had a show of her paintings in the Big Apple, she will be taken more seriously back home. The play, an Untimely Ripped production, is written by Andrew Farrar, a Montrealer who spent a couple of years as a struggling actor-writer in NYC and has come back home. If Farrar believes that having done some work Off Broadway will get him noticed here, he’s probably right. On the other hand, the Montreal theatre audience is really discerning. If we don’t like something, we’re not intimidated by good reviews it got elsewhere. You’d better be good.

Tecumseh As a Doorstop is good, in a lot of ways. Right off the top, as we’re introduced to four twentysomethings sharing a postage-stamp sized, roach-ridden apartment in SoHo, it’s laugh-out-loud funny. Elias Toufexis (a Montrealer now based in Vancouver) plays the brooding Canadian, Shaw, who is working on a screenplay about early 19th-century native leader Tecumseh. Farrar himself plays Adam, a big puppy-doggish American who is not actually the “idiot” that Shaw characterizes him as—he’s just a bit of a leg-humper.

Did I mention the play takes place on Sept. 11, 2001? Wait… and it’s a comedy? Well yeah, like a lot of people, the characters in Tecumseh respond to unspeakable events with dark humour. And remember, these are people who are close to the horror—they can see the burning towers from their apartment window—but not personally affected by it.

Earlier in the day, the two men, out videotaping the scene, have had to run from a cloud of soot, but all four roommates are home safe and sound. They are not, as someone points out later on, among the households missing someone from their dinner table this night.

Farrar uses the circumstances as catalyst for a confrontation between the two men about their national differences. Shaw rips Americans for their ignorance of the rest of the world. Adam pegs the rest of us as insecure kids at the back of the class piping “notice me, America!”

So far, so good. The trouble with Tecumseh begins about halfway into the 80-minute show when the roommates crack open the Crown Royal. Politics and 9/11 itself are virtually forgotten as the gang gets drunker and drunker and reveals more and more dark secrets. There’s the lowdown on Shaw’s scar, which I initially took to be 9/11 schmutz on his face; and the reason why Megan paints so many “pregnant chicks.” With revelations coming fast and furious, the play degenerates into melodrama near the end. Farrar could afford to lose one or two plot twists, and if he produces this play again (it has already played Vancouver) he might consider handing the directing reins to someone besides himself. That said, Tecumseh is still well worth seeing. As a playwright, Farrar has a good ear for dialogue, a way with a one-liner and something to say. As an actor, he is ridiculously appealing. Kind of like America.

Tecumseh as a Doorstop, until Feb. 5 at Théàtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), $10–$12, 908-9090

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