ON STAGE: Amazon Dream
eye WEEKLY
eye WEEKLY January 26 1995
Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday
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ON STAGE ON STAGE
preview
AMAZON DREAM
Featuring Errol Sitahal, Sandi Ross, Mark Lonergan and Jane Spidell.
Written and directed by Ken Gass.
Factory Studio Cafe, 125 Bathurst St.
To Feb. 5. $7- $14, 864-9971.
by
CHRIS PIERSON
The idea of a Japanese soldier stranded in the South Pacific, who
thinks WWII is still kicking decades after the fact, is not exactly
new. If you took all the deluded, stranded troops who've appeared in
books and movies over the years and laid them end-to-end, you could
probably build a bridge from Java to Oahu.
Now, the castaway population of has gotten a bit larger, thanks to Ken
Gass. Gass, who founded the Factory Theatre 25 years ago, has written
about such a colony of exiles in Amazon Dream, which opened this week
at the Factory Theatre with a startlingly large cast -- 17 actors in
all.
The difference here is that, instead of being faceless, bellicose
adversaries for American good guys like they've been in most flicks,
it's the stranded soldiers that are the focus of Amazon Dream. And
they've built a neo-feudal society ruled by one Lord Ronjo (Errol
Sitahal), a poet-philosopher who dreams of using aesthetics to free his
homeland.
"Ronjo's got these ideas that he's going to conquer the world with
peace -- when there isn't a World War any more," says actor Jane
Spidell. She plays Jennifer, a French sociologist whose arrival on the
island leads, through a chain of events, to the disintegration of
Ronjo's fragile order. Ronjo is forced to watch as his warmongering
rivals mount an invasion to liberate Japan -- an invasion Jennifer has
told him is pointless because the war is long over.
Spidell calls her character an idealist. "Her whole idea is that she's
going to walk onto this island, and by telling the truth everything
will be made better. But she realizes it's more complex than that."
Spidell, who worked with Gass in last year's Claudius, was drawn to the
part because she wanted "the challenge of playing an elegant lady."
"I have to be able to pull off a little breeding and culture," she
says. "I've got to brush off my high-heeled shoes again. I've been
walking around in winter boots."
Boots probably would be better for Gass' set. "At first I saw the stage
design, and I was a bit skeptical," Spidell says. "It's one long ramp
down the middle of the room. With that many people on such an awkward
stage, I thought there might be a problem."
She's quick to add that Gass' direction allayed her fears. "I think
he's doing some lovely staging. He's using a lot of elements of
Japanese theatre. I think he's inspired by those sorts of ideas."
Indeed, the script is filled with kabuki performances, haiku readings,
and Oriental-styled prose -- all elements of Ronjo's ideal, ritualized
society. Heck, there's even a bit of ritual suicide thrown in, too.
With all this emphasis on traditional Japanese culture, it's odd that
there aren't Japanese actors in the lead roles, but Spidell says
ethnicity isn't important. "I don't think it matters. I don't know what
difference it would have made."
Still, belief in illusions isn't constrained to one culture, and
Spidell says that's really what Amazon Dream -- and the relationship
between Jennifer and Ronjo -- is really all about. "It's about seeking
an ideal you're not even sure exists," she says. "You can construct
your world out of what you think is the truth, but it might be a
completely different world from that of your neighbors."
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