Lungs filled with doom in dark comedy
The Shadow Theatre production of Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs was supposed to open on March 13. But then the production blew up, losing its Montreal-based director and two local stars. When we finally got to see the show on Friday March 22, the directing credit was split between the assistant director Emma Houghton and Shadow Artistic Director, John Hudson and cast with two new players – Elena Porter and Jake Tkaczyk.
The two performers were still “on book,” with the show staged in front of a single drape. The show runs at the Varscona Theatre until March 31.
Hudson and Shadow Theatre are to be congratulated for continuing with this edgy, complex, brutally honest, frequently hilarious probe into the world that today’s young people find themselves. The company could have just given up – but they made it happen. Lungs is a formidable fable produced for full impact. The two performers are so able you quickly forget they’re reading some of the dialogue. It helps that Macmillan has kept the production simple, and the intimacy only helps you concentrate on the players as they orbit each other in the empty space.
British playwright Macmillan cannily begins his dissection of the pressures of modern living in that icon of all things modern and soulless, Ikea. Two contemporary young things “Woman” (Porter) and “Man” (Tkaczyk – we never do learn their names) fall into a conversation while standing in line. The two are examples of what we understand are Gen Y’ers – young, idealistic, latte-drinking, self-absorbed Yuppies – which means they are also educated, nervous and feel vaguely responsible for a world going to wrack and ruin.
“Should we have a baby?” he asks innocently.
The question brings on a freakout about the morality of bringing a child into our precarious world, what a carbon footprint a child brings to an already polluted earth. Particularly, as one study apparently pointed out, the tiny creature will create 10,000 tonnes of CO2 before he or she dies. “
That’s the weight of the Eiffel tower. I’d be giving birth to the Eiffel Tower,” wails Woman.
Apparently the decision to have a family is enough to unleash an intense argument and a tsunami of liberal guilt. The genius of the playwright, and this minimalist production, is that the whole, morally challenging, world-spanning play inflates from that single conversation.
The play exists on many levels. There is the simple one that includes planting trees, recycling and curtailing our use of plastics – the moral imperative that governs responsible lives. The central idea proves remarkably durable: scarily obvious in the climate changing world we see each night on the news. It’s also the story of a rocky relationship.
Before all this starts to sound pretty bleak, Lungs takes a turn and embarks on a funny and poignant journey through her pregnancy. It skirts very closely to familiar cliché, but the two actors are endlessly and effortlessly naturalistic, infusing the dialogue with humour and nuance.
Macmillan has given Porter the toughest time. She’s the alpha dog in the relationship and generates the direction of the conversation. In the hands of a lesser actor, the constant grumbling, shrill monologues and whining could become tedious. She has problems keeping herself focussed and her conversations tend to resemble the Mississippi Delta with tributaries running all over the place. Through it all, Porter remains impressively sincere. Tkaczyk’s character is, well, he’s henpecked. But this fine actor keeps an easy-going charm with his eye on Man’s humanity and caring. And he’s endlessly patient with his partner’s inability to make up her mind, and her obsession with detail.
Lungs is an intellectual cold shower based on an existential and inconvenient truth – a view of the havoc we wreak on our small planet delivered in small, easily digestible, and always pertinent bits in a two-handed conversation.
It’s all very funny – until it’s not. In another sharp turn, our two must face the reality of life (and death) on planet Earth. It’s a tribute to this sharp, thought-provoking and vital play that it takes us all the way.
Photos by Marc J Chalifoux
