WARNING … MIME!!

A show that’s entirely in mime should be required to give due and fair and large-fonted warning to blurry eyed and unsuspecting theatre lovers stumbling into shows based soley on the program’s promise of Beatles lore. I saw Eleanor on Saturday- my first show of this Toronto Fringe - and left with such high blood pressure from all the freakin miming that I’m pretty sure the Surgeon General has an ethical obligation to intervene.

Eleanor - a back story on Eleanor Rigby and Father Mackenzie, narrated via Beatles songs. This play seems to be a collective family creation written by Avi, Bonnie, Jordana, and Len Phillips, with no director listed, which may account for the problem. It was a good idea, a cool concept, but felt deeply lacking an outside eye that could say woa, if we’re seriously not going to have a single line of dialogue then the physical performances need to be more balanced, less cheezy, more nuanced, less dripping; the story needs depth to make up for the silence, the set maybe needs text to extend and challenge the speechlessness… The program lists an Equity movement coach .. OY is all I’ll say about that, and I hope they didn’t pay for all that cheezy overwrought movement, especially the stuff when they were children. Children should not make your skin crawl with their exaggerated silent prancing glee. A director, one not emotionally attached to the loved ones in the play, could have stepped back to pinpoint the failings in the narrative as well, which tend to be pretty hard to see from inside the process of building the character and enjoying the electricity of creation. Because the narrative was hugely flawed, in my opinion. Using sampled bits of Beatles tracks to shape a story is not a bad idea in and of itself, but (on a technical note) the mix was choppy, the song choices repetitive, and both entirely unsubtle AND difficult to interpret. Quite a feat. I was confused throughout and sinking deeper in my chair as Eleanor danced and Mackenzie found the lord, and both ended up in the hospital, and I guess she had an abortion and he was at a shrink the whole time (Yesderday…all my troubles.. yeah) except that by the very end, everything poignant and terrible and moving in Eleanor Rigby the song was trampled by a glued on happy ending that obliterated what logic their might have been in his time with the shrink. That’s what bothered me the most - not the plot confusion, but the damage done to the lyrics. The song is about lonely people; the happy ending is the final insult.

There were some fine moments from the actor playing Mackenzie, and Eleanor’s sandy alto vocal was a lovely breakfrom all the piped in audio, but it’s primary effect was to increase my feeling of suffocating in the voiceless room, of wanting to stand up and hollar ] “WHAT IS GOING ON?!” Speak for crisssake, add some subtlety, some of this promised backstory for the lonely people, not just ‘meaningful’ hand gesture and blank signs at the protest.. what are you protesting? What are you trying to say? The whole play in fact was a back peddle away from saying anything. aaaarrrgGGG. I bit my tongue. Restrained myself, and stayed till the end like a good reviewer.

The Fringe is most fascinating for these insights- what it is that can cause a well-intentioned play to fail, and, if you’re seeing a bunch, reveals the gut level difference between great and lying-to-myself-it was-ok plays. Lucky for me, everything else I’ve seen here has been quiet great, and I’ll get this gall out of my system and tell you all about them soon. In the case of Eleanor, I believe the problem is a trap any of us could fall into: too much reliance on a safe and insular community of people, no outside eye. I suspect the mix of songs was done by someone in the fam as well, it had the choppy feel of ok, good enough. This piece should have been brought before a director a full month before showtime - someone respected, maybe even feared a little; someone who could have brought in new skills and perspectives to to shake the ok-in-theory stuff out, clear the weeds and made room for some more interesting and deeper stuff to grow. A story about Eleanor Rigby could have left us weeping and cheering and instead it was a disapointment.