Governing Judge Biddle

>> Centaur’s Trying is a solidly written heartwarmer

MENTOR DRAMA: Frank Moore and Stephanie Breton

by AMY BARRATT

Calling your play Trying is kind of like naming your baby Angel Iris Murphy Brown (as did Scary Spice this past month): you’re setting her up for a lot of teasing. Didn’t playwright Joanna McClelland Glass worry about the potential headlines (Trying not succeeding; Trying our patience)? Trying joins the ranks of titles just begging for a punchline because they are either impossible, or too easy, to live up to: Heaven, Glorious, Curtains, Les Miserables.

Despite the title, Trying, the final play in this Centaur season, doesn’t deserve cheap shots. It’s a solidly written two-hander in a recent tradition of “mentor dramas.” Based on the playwright’s own experience as a young woman hired as personal secretary to former attorney general and Nuremberg trial judge Francis Biddle, it is reminiscent of heartwarming dramas like Visiting Mr. Green and Tuesdays With Morrie, with some of the braininess of Proof and historical context of Taking Sides.

Judge Biddle (Frank Moore) is 81 when he hires Sarah Schorr, age 25, as the latest in a long line of secretaries, most of whom have quit after he reduced them to tears once too often with his stinging remarks. Come to think of it, there are shades of Mary Poppins here too: Sarah (Stephanie Breton) is akin to the classic no-nonsense governess, only here her misunderstood charge is not a toddler, but a dodderer.

The play is set in the judge’s office, the hayloft of a renovated barn on his property in Georgetown. Elli Bunton’s set is lovely and her costumes evoke the period (1967) without mocking it. These are, after all, conservative characters (Democrats, you understand, but not anarchists). While one of the judge’s nephews is causing him much worry by experimenting with drugs and running off to Haight-Ashbury, Sarah wears sensible skirts and blouses, is married and living out a 1950s destiny. (She is working for the judge only part-time and will most likely stop working to raise a family.) Glass makes the character five years younger than she was when she went to work for the real Judge Biddle, perhaps to further exaggerate the distance between them.

If the play has a weak point, it’s the lack of development of the Sarah character. Glass is obviously still in awe of Biddle’s accomplishments, as are we. Still, she puts a very human, ailing face on him. Unfortunately, due to his “lack of resources” for dealing with things human and emotional, Sarah is prevented from expressing much of anything. She is the bright, practical young thing from Saskatchewan who may or may not be dying on the inside.

The opening night audience thoroughly enjoyed the play’s running jokes, including the judge’s obsession with the rules of grammar. The production is so careful not to become maudlin that it risks not moving us at all.

RECONSTRUCTING THE MAIN

While Boulevard St-Laurent continues to be dug up and put back together by bulldozers, a fictional look at Montreal’s Main is being remounted at la Licorne. Coin Saint-Laurent, which opened last night, is five short plays by five authors, including Jean Marc Dalpé (Trick or Treat) and François Létourneau (Cheech), each set on a different corner of the legendary street.

Trying at Centaur (453 St-François-Xavier)
to May 27, (514) 288-3161
Coin Saint-Laurent, to May 26 at
La Licorne (4559 Papineau), (514) 523-2246