by AMY BARRATT

The “festival” of new English plays continued last week with two openings: Persephone Productions’ Prodigy, adapted from a novella by Nancy Huston; and Centaur Theatre’s Have a Heart, by playwright-in- residence David Sherman.

Huston, the Calgary-born author who lives in Paris, published French and English versions of Prodigy in 2000. The novella was subsequently adapted for the stage by French director Gabriel Garran and produced in Paris. Gabrielle Soskin, Persephone’s artistic director, got Huston herself to translate the adaptation into English for this production at the Théâtre Ste-Catherine. Karen Cromar, Nathalie Stechysin and Amelia Sargisson play three generations in a family of talented musicians.

Thematically, Prodigy reminded me (for different reasons) of two other recent creations. Having recently seen Anana Rydvald’s Section O on the same stage, I couldn’t help noting that both shows featured the image of a little girl hiding under a grand piano while her mother played. Both shows also address mental illness. Both shows have actresses speaking directly out to the audience. There is also a comparison to be made with Bye Bye Baby, Elyse Gasco’s stage adaptation of her own short stories, which is set for a remount at Centaur later this month. Mother-daughter relationships are central to both works.

Watching Prodigy made me think that Huston wrote it as fiction rather than drama because the material is more suited to the page than the stage. That’s not to say that this production doesn’t try hard to dramatize it. The tiny stage at TSC is completely dominated by an off-white baby grand piano. Although the imagery is appropriate—the characters’ lives are also dominated by the instrument—I worried at first that the three actresses would literally have nowhere to act. Soskin, who directs, has found some pretty creative solutions to this “problem” with her blocking. It’s the text itself, heavy on internal monologues, light on interaction between characters, that holds the production back.

Centaur Theatre is making a point of giving subscribers their money’s worth this year. After the no-intermission brevity of Cheech, Have a Heart is a return to the beefy fare we had with Hellfire Pass and Condoville. Like Condoville, this new play is rife with set-pieces and local in-jokes.

This is a first theatrical play for Sherman, a journalist and screenwriter, and he shows a fine grasp of the mainstream medium. Let’s be clear: Sherman isn’t breaking new ground here, nor is he trying to. On its own terms, as a Neil Simon-style comedy, Have a Heart works admirably.

In a nutshell, Have a Heart is about Gerry, a button merchant in his early 50s (Michael Rudder) who is diagnosed with clogged arteries and faces the possibility of bypass surgery. The two-and-a-half-hour play gives Gerry ample time to kvetch about all doctors being idiots and how he’s damned if they’re gonna rip open his chest. As for being any kind of examination of “our ailing health care system,” it’s not. Such realities as wait times and stretchers in hallways are used as punchlines, nothing more.

On opening night the actors flubbed a lot of lines, but it’s understandable: they just have too many. Newcomer Debra Lee McCormick stands out as Gerry’s Buddhist daughter, Sarah. Her interaction with her grandfather (Joel Miller) is particularly touching and funny. Coincidentally, both shows reviewed above have quite stunning sets and costumes by female designers recently graduated from NTS/ENT.

Prodigy, to April 9 at Théâtre Ste-Catherine (264 Ste-Catherine E.), 481-1327 Have A Heart, to April 23 at Centaur (453 St-François-Xavier), 288-3161

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