Not funny, not theatre

>> Farce is a failure of Greek proportions

by AMY BARRATT

"You know what I hate?" asks Aristophanes in the first few minutes of Farce. "Reviews."

Though I suspect even the curmudgeonly Aristophanes didn't hate good reviews, I'm quite sure he would have hated this one. The best that can be said about Farce, a bilingual collaboration between Guy Sprung's infinitheatre and Jean Asselin's Omnibus, is that it's a beau risque. As theatre--that thing with plot, character and movement--it is a failure. How ironic that Omnibus, a company known for its movement-oriented style, should be associated with a play that goes exactly nowhere.

What plot there is in Michael Mackenzie's Farce goes something like this: Aristophanes must write a new play. If he writes the play that Isocrates, a politician, wants him to, there may be government funding for the production.

Had Mackenzie kept the focus on this as the central conflict, he might have had something. Instead, the rag-tag group of actors preparing to perform in Aristophanes' play seem all-too-ready to do whatever the powers that be have in mind as long as they get paid. Aristophanes himself is old and going senile and seems to have no understanding of what's at stake.

The appearance of Marie Lefebvre as Socrates offers a breath of hope; surely now we'll get a lively debate about free speech and the role of art? Instead, most of the second act (the first having meandered plotlessly by, amid lame gags with a stuffed duck) is devoted to a debate of whether a) politics is an art (!) and whether b) politicians are corrupt. Clearly, this is no basis for debate at all, as you don't have to be Socrates to answer a) no, and b) duh. "It's like people who are trying to sell you something!" announces Socrates, making the stunningly original connection between politics and advertising. Where Farce wants to be profound, it is merely esoteric.

Besides, even if the debates were really fascinating, they would not a play make. In Greek Old Comedy, of which the plays of Aristophanes are the only extant example, there was always a section called the agon; the action would come to a stop and two parts of the chorus would debate some hot topic of the day. Farce is packed with so much agon--the root of our English word agony, by the way--that there's no room left for the play.

And then there's the pointless bilingualism. If you want to set a play in Montreal and have characters switching back and forth from French to English to convey the reality of our city, fine. But why should a bunch of ancient Greeks sound like the line-up at the 24 bus stop?

Infinitheatre has tried bilingualism twice now, first with its Endgame, in which long stretches of French text were appropriated into the English version and vice versa, and now with Farce. It's time to give up, or at least to give up the idea that a unilingual public should be able to follow. If you're doing bilingual theatre, it's got to be because you believe we live in a bilingual city and that there is a bilingual public out there. Otherwise your text comes to sound about as interesting as a Bell Canada recorded announcement.

Infini has more promising projects coming up, beginning with Seymour Blicker's Pals this weekend at La Cabane. :



Farce, to Oct. 14, Tuesday-Saturday, 8pm at Espace Libre, $15-19; 521-4191