To All Appearances A Lady - University of British Columbia

stantly shifting emotions, a natural for production
at Stratford.
Morris Panych is a West Coast actor,
director and playwright, who has at least
five other plays to his credit. 7 Stories won
six Jessie awards in 1990. The action centres
on one character, the Man, who is standing
on a ledge on the seventh storey of an
apartment building, about to jump off.
Behind him is a row of windows, opening
quickly or slowly to allow the Man and the
audience to gain glimpses into the lives and
stories of a dozen people, all played by four
actors. These bizarre encounters complicate
and illuminate on a horizontal level the
position of the man in the vertical scheme
of things, and there is constant interaction
on these two planes, with people and
objects that seem about to plunge from the
various windows to the pavement below.
Our attention is wonderfully focused by
the set and staging embodying the sense of
restriction, limitation, flatness and absurdity;
on a ledge one can go so far and no
farther without falling off. At the same time
the mind of the Man is constantly distracted
by his interaction with the various
stories. Sometimes he is merely a witness,
at other times an arbiter of style or a judge
of moral issues. In almost every case there
is a lack of communication, and his position
is almost always misunderstood.
It is only in the final conversation with a
100-year-old woman that the Man, the only
character who is never named, reveals anything
about himself. It is the old woman
who shows him the way to escape limitation,
leading to the surprisingly uplifting
ending.
Once again, we have an actor, trained at
the Conservatoire d'art dramatique in
Québec City, who has turned to playwriting
with great success. For this play, Maryse
Pelletier won the Governor-General's award
and the Grand Prix du Journal de Montréal.
In a revealing introductory note, she says
that the voices come from deep within her
own psyche, one representing the dreamer,
the questioner, and the other the observer
of reality. They represent also the experience
of journalists and artists in Québec
from 1970 to 1975, just before the Parti
Québécois came to power.
Duo for Obstinate Voices is and is not a
love story, concerning the complex relationship
between Philip, a charismatic and
passionately political television journalist,
and Cathryn, a dancer and choreographer.
There is also the interplay between domination
and the desire to be dominated and
the desire to rebel, between two different
kinds of creativity, one that demands an
audience and constant feedback, and one
that needs slow reflective maturing in
silence.
The text is divided into scenes, each
marked by a musical notation (Allegro ma
non troppo, Andante con brio, and so on),
emphasizing the fact that both these characters
are performers in different ways.
Each scene also has the title of an emotion
or state of mind (Ignorance, fear, etc.) as a
guide to interpretation. We are conscious of
the author's desire, as a performer, to communicate
with the actors, as well as with the
audience. The musical analogy is sustained
as the characters performing this duo
together occasionally burst out into solos
or monologues addressed to the audience.
Louise Ringuet is responsible for the
translation of this text into English. Despite
a few gallicisms near the beginning, once we
become enmeshed in the conflict between
Philip and Cathryn, the magic works, and
everything they say becomes credible.
The weaving together of these conflicting
voices is masterful, and the total effect is
one of simplicity and universality. Maryse
Pelletier has written an elegant play, daring
at the same time to express emotions with
great honesty and power. What more could
one ask?
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