Defying convention

Tryst puts a psychosexual twist
on an Edwardian world

LAYERS OF LIES: Michelle Giroux and C. David Johnson

By NEIL BOYCE

Amazing what the perspective of 100 years can do. Scouse actress and author Karoline Leach takes the framework of a fusty, pre-war English melodrama and amps it up, psycho-sexual style, in her play Tryst, now on at the Segal.

Diana Leblanc directs the piece set in the late Edwardian-era London of 1910, a rich backdrop for what seems at first a witty but conventional story.

Actor C. David Johnson’s George Love is a charming sociopath whose career is seducing plain-looking women—he even marries them for a night—before making off with their money and valuables. He invents an exotic background of travel and military honour, piling lie upon lie, often forgetting his invented back-story as he mixes names and dates. He seduces us for a time too, breaking the fourth wall as he blithely describes to us his ways with the poor creatures who fall for him—referred to as “it” in his recollections.

He lavishes them with roses stolen from a cemetery, treats them to fine cuisine before skipping out on the bill (or crawling out through a bathroom window), and gives them a gold wedding band made of brass, turning “just a little green” on the inside. “I leave them smiling,” he says “I like to think of it as quid pro quo.”

Adelaide Pinchin (Michelle Giroux) seems at first just another in a long line of pigeons for George to pluck—until some darkness of her own begins to seep out. She has a simple life at a milliner’s shop, sewing elaborate designs onto ladies’ hats, then going home to live with her parents; shopping with Mum on a Saturday and playing cards with Dad.

But the cheerful mask she wears is paper-thin. Daddy likes to visit her bedroom of a Saturday night after he’s had a few. And of her co-workers stuck behind the scenes at the shop with no chance of advancement, Adelaide says, “We’ve all got something wrong with us—that’s why they’ve got us in the back room.”

Leach uses the elegant clothes and relatively relaxed morals of the period to dissect the idea of a gigolo and a plain shopgirl. Her sharp text about the adult face of a wounded child changes a simple story into something more modern, dangerous and enticing.

Both leads are layered and convincing. Leblanc manages the unexpected twists and shifts of upper hand with finesse—though the final, barbed ending may leave a bitter taste.

Astrid Janson’s eye-popping set has walls made of long fringes that box actors inside a cramped hotel. Luc Prairie’s lighting design doesn’t make a big deal of itself but frames it all beautifully: false shadows behind a dancing couple take on a life of their own; videos of the pair are projected faintly onto fringed walls, staring out blankly like grim daguerreotypes.

A nice, nasty little show.

Also of note, Black Theatre Workshop favourite George Boyd (Wade in the Water) makes a return to the Segal Centre with his play, Le Code Noir, directed by Richard Donat and starring Tyrone Benskin.

The story of “Black Mozart” Joseph Boulogne, Le Chevalier St. George chronicles his rise from slavery to the top of French society as a swordsman, musician and gifted composer in the court of Louis XIV.

TRYST, TO MARCH 29 AND LE CODE
NOIR, TO APRIL 5 AT THE SEGAL
CENTRE FOR PERFORMING ARTS
(5170 CÔTE STE-CATHERINE) TICKETS:
(514) 790-1245