ON STAGE: I HATE YOU ON MONDAYS
eye WEEKLY
eye WEEKLY November 30 1995
Toronto's arts newspaper .....free every Thursday
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ON STAGE ON STAGE
I HATE YOU ON MONDAYS
Featuring Christine Brubaker, Derek Metz and Shawn Mathieson. Written
by Kate Miles. Directed by Jennifer Brewin. Theatre Passe Muraille, 16
Ryerson Ave. To Dec. 3. $10-$15, 504-7529.
by
LAURA KOSTERSKI
Kate Miles' play I Hate You On Mondays is a slightly grittier version
of Degrassi High -- the Floundering, Sex-Obsessed Years. But unlike
Degrassi, the characters don't feel real.
Pinch (Derek Metz), for example, is your typical comic foil; a
lobotomized drummer who eats popcorn off the floor. The 21-year-old
playwright tries to give him depth by depicting his bizarre obsession
with Catholicism. But Pinch's confessional scenes, where he rhymes off
the sins of drug use, premarital sex and taking the Lord's name in
vain, are played more for humor than despair. So when Pinch has his
climax, a post-high depression that culminates in the line, "the only
thing that separates man from animals is that we know someone is
watching," the epiphany feels ungrounded.
Bernadette (Christine Brubaker) has similar problems. She's a bad girl
with a good heart and a healthy libido, who wakes up breathless in the
middle of the night. But her late-night terrors are never developed.
She pokes a scab on her knee-cap with a pin, an adolescent form of
self-mutilation that is never explored or explained. She makes
reference to an AIDS test, which the audience never hears about again.
Miles gets carried away with teen humor and forgets the underlying
despair. She plants the seeds of pain and ignores them.
Moth (Shawn Mathieson), the sexually frustrated teen in love with his
former babysitter, is the only character whose actions reveal a
clearly defined malaise. When he has sex for the first time he
complains, "I thought it would be more dignified." He believes that
the only woman who can provide that dignity is Bernadette.
But when Moth tries to overdose on children's Tylenol, the audience
laughed. Miles can't seem to locate the textual tones needed for real
drama.
Also, many of the scenes are extremely short. Rather than carving out
emotional transitions in the script, Miles makes use of numerous
black-outs. She doesn't take the time to develop character
relationships and story-lines. The language reflects the clever
repartee of precocious youths, but has no compelling subtext.
Despite the limitations of the script, the performance are strong,
particularly Mathieson's as Moth. But, in the end, we learn nothing
interesting or earth-shattering about the MTV generation.
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