by AMY BARRATT

The Centaur Two is the larger of two performance spaces at the Centaur theatre. It's a cozy, 440-seat hall with brick walls and a traditional proscenium arch. So what's wrong with it? Why do so many plays just bomb there?

Although I haven't done a scientific study, I'd be willing to bet that if you pulled out all of the positive reviews for Centaur shows over the years, the vast majority of them would be for plays staged in the smaller Centaur One.

Often, of course, the blame doesn't lie solely with the space. Mambo Italiano, Vinci, Still the Night… there have been some weak texts produced in the larger space, but even great plays have fallen flat there: The Crucible, Twelfth Night, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Even Margaret Edson's Wit, an innately moving piece, failed to really make contact across the proscenium divide.

Last week, Centaur launched its 35th season with Life After George, a contemporary play by Australia's Hannie Rayson. The tale of a lefty history professor and the women in his life received an armful of awards in its native country and was produced in the West End of London. And yet, as staged by Gordon McCall in Centaur Two, it's occasionally amusing but mostly dull as dirt.

I find it hard to believe that earlier productions didn't cut great chunks out of the text, which is simply too long. McCall seems aware that he needs to keep up the pace, but his modus operandi is to get everyone to plow through their long speeches at breakneck speed. This does more harm than good, as we tend to lose the thread and zone out.

In Life After George, Peter George has just died in an accident leaving behind a young third wife, a daughter about the same age and two exes. The play is largely composed of flashbacks as George's friends and family try to make sense of his life and plan his funeral. The life is a survey course in radical politics from the late '60s to the new millennium, and the political discussions in the play are some of its stronger moments. Unfortunately, it quickly degenerates into a soap opera of love, betrayal and secrets that lasts nearly three hours.

Getting back to the curse, I don't know if it's particularly bad acoustics in the space or that contemporary actors don't get adequate vocal training, but people inevitably end up shouting themselves hoarse in Centaur Two. It is seemingly impossible to simulate an intimate conversation while still making oneself heard. Ron White, as George, and Patricia Yeatman as his second wife have the most difficulty here. (On the plus side, Yeatman, Anne Day-Jones, Paula Jean Hixson and Kent Allen have been coached to some pretty convincing Aussie accents by Sarah Fraser.)

So is the problem with Centaur Two simply that it is too reminiscent of a high school auditorium? Does this critic just have it in for proscenium arches? Certainly I have had difficulties with some other such venues in the city, notably Salle Jean-Duceppe and Théâtre du Nouveau Monde. Those spaces tend to lend themselves more easily to classics rather than contemporary, especially naturalistic, plays. Life After George, sprawling though it is, is essentially a family drama, and probably would have come across better in the more intimate Centaur One.

LIFE AFTER GEORGE, TO OCT. 19 AT CENTAUR, $20–$38, 288-3161

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