Based on the 1952 Fred Zinnerman film The Member of the Wedding, One Yellow Rabbit’s Smash Cut Freeze is a play in black and white and shades of grey. You just have to sit back and listen to them play crazy.
The stage is set with the furniture hanging from the ceiling. The only thing bolted down is the table. And the characters? They all have their own instability.
The play tells of a mother and father and their only son (played by Denise Clark, Andy Curtis and Christopher Duthie). The scenes are fragments of the son’s lucid dream smashed together and tied up by monologues.
The stress between the members of the family is vibrantly illustrated. The father is the nurturer, making the meals and cleaning the house. The mother is failing as a grown up, competing with her own son for the role of the child. She doesn’t identify with being a mother and has dramatic tangents where she wants to change her name or go on vacation. The son is battling with his own fear and sexuality and struggling being the only, only child in the neighbourhood.
When these conflicts come to a head, the tension is amplified with a brilliant use of echoes, microphones and moving furniture.
Within this wobbly dream there are lines of poetry, with an entire section spoken in alliteration and refrains speckled among the dialogue. There is absurdity, as the mother picks at her supposed sliver with a giant knife and the father’s false eye is left on the table. And there is humour as the son climbs a ladder instead of a tree, as there were none in his new neighbourhood. The play is a jolting mix between warm and cold, black and white, funny and serious. Incorporating dance and poetry Smash Cut Freeze is a dream you’ll want to see again and again.
Smash Cut Freeze is playing in the Big Secret Theatre until Saturday, January 29, 2011. Buy tickets at hprodeo.ca.
