Another kick at The Wall

>> The 1986 play that almost ended in disaster joins Two Short Women on a double bill

by Amy Barratt

When The Wall was originally produced in Montreal, in 1986, it almost ended in tragedy.

“We were rehearsing at the old Playwrights Workshop space on Berri,” explains playwright Ann Lambert, who also directed the production. “The actors [Simon Sachs and Jody Richardson] were in uniform and carrying these guns that my boyfriend at the time had made out of wood.” As they went about their rehearsal, they had no idea that a nosey neighbour had been watching them through the window with binoculars and had called the police to report a hostage taking.

“We step out of the door,” continues Lambert, “and are surrounded by police. It turns out they have closed off Berri, Duluth and Rivard and called in the SWAT team.” Both actors were thrown to the ground and pinned there by a cop’s boot to the neck.

Finally, one of the policemen picked up the prop guns and realized they were fake and the incident ended without anyone being seriously harmed. Still, the cops told the actors later that they had had them in their sights for 40 minutes, ready to shoot for the heart.

“I guess nobody bothered to check what that address was,” concludes Lambert.

During rehearsals for the current production of The Wall, which opened last night at Théâtre Ste-Catherine in a double bill with Lambert’s most recent play, Two Short Women, they were careful where they went with their fake guns.

Initially, Lambert was inspired to write the play by a photo she saw in the newspaper of two guards on the Berlin Wall removing the body of a man they had just shot. It got the playwright wondering about these soldiers and what it does to a person to have a job like that. Wanting the play to be more universal than specific, she never identified the wall as being the Berlin Wall. The result is that despite the dismantling of that particular wall, the play remains relevant today.

In the new production, the two soldiers, a veteran and a new recruit, are both played by women. Indeed, the evening’s double bill features two two-handers, both performed by Laura Mitchell and Debra Kirshenbaum.

A nod to Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women, Two Short Women was a working title that stuck. Written specifically with Mitchell and Kirshenbaum in mind, Lambert says, “I initially called it that because Laura and Debra are short!” In the end, she kept it because she realized that the women in the play also “come up short” in their relationship.

The evening is a co-production of Right Now! (which produced Lambert and Mitchell’s The Mary Project in 2001) and Unwashed Grape, a company co-founded by Mitchell and Paul Hawkins, which has produced several plays at the GLBT Harvest Festival. Hawkins directs The Wall, and Lambert directs Two Short Women, a play about two old friends on a tropical vacation that takes a dark turn. “Both plays inhabit a similar kind of world,” says Lambert. “They’re both quite claustrophobic… so the Théâtre Ste-Catherine serves them well.”

With any luck, the run will not be interrupted by any unexpected visits from the SWAT team.

TWO SHORT WOMEN AND THE WALL,
UNTIL MARCH 11, TUESDAYS– SATURDAYS
AT 8 P.M. SATURDAYS AND SUNDAYS AT 2 P.M.,
AT THÉÂTRE STE-CATHERINE
(264 STECATHERINE E.), 284-3939