Haunting horror

>> Dead Ducks is a tight, gripping show

by AMY BARRATT

Lovely St. Catharines Ontario, population 125,000, is home to the annual Grape and Wine Festival, the Welland Canal, Paul Bernardo, the Henley Regatta and playwright William R. Young. I only mention his name in the same breath as Bernardo's because, from watching his play Dead Ducks, I get the feeling Young may not have been completely shocked to learn what was going on behind that picket fence in his home town when that story broke.

If Young's Beyond Catholic gave some sense of how he was haunted by the experience of growing up in the southern Ontario town, his latest play, Dead Ducks, goes into detail. In it, actors in their 20s portray 12-year-olds encountering, in the space of a summer, all the ugliness of the adult world.

There are more things that work than don't in this show. The acting, especially by Jacob Richmond as a stand-in for the playwright, and Eric Davis as his troubled friend Buddy, is top-notch. Carolyn Guillet is impressive in her directing debut.

I've always liked Young's writing, but this is not the first time I've sensed he was piling on horror after horror in the fear that the truth wouldn't be disturbing enough. There is much in the writing that rings terrifyingly true: that sense, when you're that age, of having no one to turn to for help but your friends--who, of course, are as powerless as you are. Nevertheless, the script as it stands strains credulity. In Dead Ducks, we're supposed to buy that a black kid has lived to be 12 without learning what the N-word means.

The infinitheatre production is being performed in a converted warehouse in Griffintown, a neighbourhood that's creepy and deserted at night--making it a perfect fit with this play.

The playing area is deeper than it is wide, with the audience seated on bleachers at one end. Atmospherically, it's great--dust and all, but Guillet shouldn't feel she has to use all of the space just because she has it. Some scenes take place so far back that we feel disconnected from the action and can't hear the actors. Because designer Catherine Bahuaud has used the space essentially as she found it, instead of closing off a stage area, acoustics are tricky. Dialogue sometimes gets mushy, or drowned out by music and sound. And if anybody coughs in the audience, it bounces around the room.

Technicalities aside, Guillet has delivered a really tight, gripping show. Jean-Charles Martel has lit the space to great dramatic effect. In terms of all the production elements coming together--script, design, direction, acting--Dead Ducks is one of the best things infini has ever done.

Dead Ducks at Griffintown Theatre, 156 Ann until June 3; info 987-1774