In The Chamber 2010

On Friday night, a large group of first year Crecomms sacrificed their evenings to watch a production at the Rachel Browne Theatre. The play, entitled In The Chamber 2010 was made up of two monologues that each lasted about an hour. While the acting was very solid, the excitement level simply wasn't up to par for casual theatre fans like myself.

The play was the fifth installment of the In The Chamber series and showcased two original pieces. The first, Last Man in Krakendorf, was written and performed by Gordon Tanner. This was my favorite of the two parts and featured really impressive and energetic acting from Tanner who has established himself as a true Manitoba talent. 

It deals with a man who has reached the end of his rope and, enlightened by a fire in a hog barn, realized that he has little to live for in his dull life. He wants to escape from the "middle of the herd" and is sending a video message to Warren Buffet in an attempt to show just how rotten the system in which he works has become. The scene works because of solid acting and almost permanent doom mongering but misses the mark at the end of the day because of a complete lack of interaction between characters. In addition, the subject matter is alarming dry and difficult to follow. Essentially, despite his best efforts, Tanner fails to hold the audience's attention for the entire length of his work and in my opinion this equals a failed attempt.

The second half of the play was considerably worse in my opinion. It was called Last Man in Puntarenas and was written and performed by Steven Ratzlaff. 

This one dealt with a beaten down older man giving a speech to his former co-workers as he leaves his job. The speech is an intentionally sputtering and long winded diatribe about his frustration with society over losing his child. He blames failed medical procedures for the loss but ends up going off track and attacking his co-workers throughout the speech. As he speaks, more and more of his "audience" leave and he ends up speaking only to the bartender as he finishes his tirade. 

This half of the play left me confused and bored. I was already fairly worn out from the difficult to follow first production and this one was even harder to follow. Ratzlaff was far less energetic in his acting and his speech was just kind of creepy. Some of his comments were strange and inappropriate. The entire thing seemed a little too true for me and while this should make it more sad, it just made it more disturbing in my view.

If this wasn't enough, the speech was simply impossible to follow. For starters, it included too much medical vernacular for the average person to understand. While that was difficult, a more pressing problem was the fact that the dialogue was all over the place. It touched on cancer, sex, broken marriages etc. There was too much there for me to be able to continue paying attention.

The two halves of the play were tied together by their general subject matter dealing with two men who have become totally disillusioned with society and checked out mentally. Both feel that others are to blame not necessarily for their mistakes, but for constantly failing to learn from them.  They have looked closely at their world, and seen nothing they liked. In short, they have surrendered, given up. 

In this way, they work as a fairly poignant and interesting look into our society but, again simply don't stimulate the audience enough to make them carry much weight. Some sort of actual movement or interaction on stage was needed to help bring the spectators, many of whom do not attend many plays, into the action.

As a side note, I was very confused as to why the audience laughed so constantly at "jokes" made during the play. Perhaps I am just not a seasoned enough theatre attendee but I found is very odd to hear so much laughter for lines that were so embarrassingly not funny. If these same people had gone to an actual comedy show, the roof probably would have come off with laughter if this is how impressed they were by such mediocre wise-cracks.

Overall, while the acting was very good and the memorization stunningly impressive, the writing and the excitement level were just not good enough for me. If I am going to go to a play, I want to be entertained and I just wasn't. Indeed, it felt more like I was the one being locked "in a chamber."