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Come on feel the boys >> But infinite festival isn't just a guy thing by AMY BARRATT
Hitching a Ride, by Celia McBride, shared the opening weekend bill with Eric Goulem's The Lonely Cowboy and Paul Dunn's Boys (both starring their authors). Though I didn't get to one of the midnight showings of Boys, I had previously seen it at the Fringe and loved it. Its brief run is unfortunately over, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it surface again later in the season. Hitching a Ride stars Sean Devine and Matt MacFadzean as prison cellmates. MacFadzean's Alnert is a weird little guy who claims to have committed a crime just to experience life on the inside. Devine plays Rafter, a repeat offender who can't survive more than a month at a time on the outside. A malevolent force in the universe has kept me from seeing Sean Devine onstage before this, but you can bet I'll be actively seeking him out from now on. At first glance, the guy looks like a big mean skinhead-which is great for this play; nobody wants to see pretty boys with soft white hands playing hardened criminals. But what you notice after watching him perform for a couple of minutes is a delicately expressive face commanded by sensitive, intelligent eyes. MacFadzean is, of course, the golden boy of Montreal Fringe hits Danespotting and Viva Versace, who is now, sadly, based in Toronto. It's good to see that he has not been completely lost to Montreal audiences. In Alnert, playwright McBride has created a character who's difficult to play without evoking bad movies-he is a little too much of a stock crazy, rolling his eyes back and clutching his head. Guy Sprung's direction has allowed Alnert's true nature to slip out a little too early. The play is tightly written, though the premise (which I won't reveal so as not to spoil the ending) is almost too straightforward, even for a one-act. Still, the 27-year-old McBride is more in control of her voice than many writers twice her age. She's one of the reasons we so desperately need an infinitheatre; if young playwrights see that there is a place where they can have their plays produced, there's a much better chance they'll stay in Montreal. Sensitive bronco buster If you're like me, just the title of The Lonely Cowboy is enough to spark interest. I have a northern city-dweller's fascination-one shared by Eric Goulem, apparently-with the wide, hot desert, the huge sky and jutting mesas of the American West. This mythological quality has been captured by Brian Smith (resident designer for infinitheatre), in a set that evokes both film Westerns and the art of Georgia O'Keeffe. Although Goulem originally wrote the play for Daniel Brochu, it's difficult to picture anyone but the author in the role now, so perfectly has it come to fit him. With those pale, almost unblinking eyes, he has the look of Jesse James or Bill Hickok in an old daguerreotype. Goulem has taken the most traditionally macho of figures and endowed him with-let's not say feminine, let's say unexpected-qualities. The text offers up a string of surprises and revelations reminiscent of good poetry. In contrast to McBride, Goulem may be trying to cram too much into the space of an hour. It's sometimes hard to hold on to a through-line in this extended monologue but, even so, it's a great pleasure to just listen and watch.
Hitching a Ride, Thursday, Oct. 29 to Saturday, Oct. 31 at 8pm and Sunday, Nov. 1 at 2pm.
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Three plays, four actors-all male. That's what weekend one of the infinite festival looked like. And I'm not even going to bitch about it. The event will get its estrogen level up starting tonight, when The Full Molly, with a cast of 11 women, opens. Meanwhile, the spiffed-up IF space has been graced by some of the finest young manhood our city has to offer, each of them bringing a wildly distinctive energy to the stage.