IN
THE EYES OF GOD
by Raul Sanchez Inglis
Squire John's Playhouse
At the Beaumont Studios
5th and Alberta
April 27-May 7
604-733-3783
Here's Jerry's review of this production when it was first mounted
last
November:
In Vancouver's current theatrical environment, with so many shows
on now that you'd have to go to the theatre five nights a week
just to keep up, it's easy for a small company to slip under the
radar. I knew about Squire John's Playhouse, the new black box
theatre in the Beaumont Studios at 5th and Alberta. I knew that
the people who run it were mounting their own first production,
a new play about the biz, employing actors who work primarily in
TV and film. But there's been so much else going on that it got
shuffled to the bottom of the pack, and I've only just now gotten
to see it, a few days before closing. Well, better late than never.
Raul Sanchez Inglis' In the Eyes
of God is a terrific play, an
extremely nasty exposé of Hollywood venality, misogyny and
the social Darwinism that drives the star-making machine. No revelations
here, but the writing is so sharp that it never feels overly familiar.
And it gets a phenomenal production.
We're deep in David Mamet territory--American
Buffalo, Glengarry
Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow--and even deeper into Neil LaBute. It's
a battle of the sexes and a war between foul-mouthed, vulgar agents,
willing to do literally anything to get ahead or keep an edge.
When Tench and Fargus, straight out of In
the Company of Men, lose
their client Foster, a sad-sack filmmaker, to an agency run by
tough broads Linne and Judy, the knives come out. Foster's marriage
falling apart is only the collateral damage. The brutal power struggle
is finally resolved by Julius, head of the men's agency and guru
of what he calls "corporate hedonism" and "dog fuck
dog" competition. These folks make Wall
Street's Gordon ("Greed
is good!") Gecko seem like an altruist.
Though derivative, and overwritten in the second act with Tench's
gratuitous "hooray for corporations" speech and a few
too many false endings, the script is mostly smart and snappy with
some exquisitely written scenes--the vicious, grinning hostility
when Fargus visits the women's agency, for one. Inglis directs
his own script with panache, a crisp pace and constantly flowing
action around the tiny stage space, with nothing for a set but
a few black-painted plywood boxes. And he has seven very strong
actors at his disposal.
Ben Ayres as sociopathic Tench and Scott Miller as sex-obsessed
Fargus are perfectly sleazy. Lori Triolo's Linne matches them
strength for strength and, like them, there's no low to which she
won't go. They were my favourite performances, but really the entire
cast is exceptional. Judi Neville shows her own kind of strength
as Nadine, the quiet one who bides her time. Graem Beddoes does
wonderful work as the filmmaker who sells his soul, and Christie
Will makes us care about his wife Andrea, the least interesting
character. Frank Cassini's bravura performance as Julius is sometimes
dangerously close to going over the top, but ultimately Cassini
keeps him grounded somewhere between Tarantino and The
Godfather.
Hey, if you're going to be derivative, you might as well derive
from the best.
Jerry Wasserman
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