\s mYevtew ELECTRONIC ADDITION - University of British Columbia

BOOKS IN REVIEWoil worker's vitality, the drifter's superficiality.He paints a lively picture of thecontemporary Edmonton scene. Moher'scharacters, although not as rich nor asdeveloped as one would like, are sufficientlywell-rounded to become individualsin the theatregoer's imagination. Thecontrast in setting between the cheap,highrise apartment, and the settled oldfarmhouse is also sharply defined. SceneThree depicts the casino and the Wheelof Fortune, where Flint and Dirk losetheir hard-earned salaries. Here, theaudience is treated to the lively ambienceof the contemporary gambling scene.Another contemporary scene of false glamouris the Drive-in Movie where starshipenters the black hole while Dirkwatches Emanuelle out the back windowwith the soundtrack off. Moher has asharp sense of satire. Dirk and Flint'slives are like the meaningless scenes onthe screen."Down for the Weekend" is wellnamed as the main character is on a fastmovingslide that promises no return.The play ends as it began with Flint,Dirk, and the Kid. They are singing"Alberta Bound" and the final trite remarkis Dirk's as he regards his MacdonaldsQuarter Pounder and reflects onbecoming part of history when the Macdonaldssign changes from thirty-four tothirty-five billion sold. A nice touch to aplay contrasting the real with the superficial!The "sense of history" at the endharks back to the beginning when Flintexplains coin collecting to Dirk as givingone "a sense of history." The only historythey share is the monotony of the oilworker's life.The second play in this anthology isKelly-Jean Rebar's "Gheckin' Out." Anotherfacet of Canadian life is depictedhere — the check-out counter girl in astore in Southern Alberta. With a typicalprairie town as setting, Rebar attempts,like Moher, to reproduce a slice of life,but with far less success. The charactersin "Checkin' Out" are one-dimensional;the dialogue is artificial and erratic, apparentlyconceived for the sake of dialectalone; the confrontations are illogical,boring and anti-climactic. What Rebar isattempting to do is certainly worthy ofthe effort, but she obviously lacks theexperience to put it all together in onecoherent, artistic unit. "Checkin' Out" isa play about one young woman's attemptto find herself and to establish a meaningfulcareer and life. Both she and herhusband marry too young and for thewrong reasons — a fact which we discoveronly at the end of the play, whenwe find it logically impossible to accept.Bob, the town's most popular hockeyplayer, is offered a hockey scholarship toUniversity; Lindsay is the girl acceptedfor University because of her grades. Insteadof going to university, they marryand remain without education or careers— she as a store clerk, he, as a smalltown hockey player. Within a year theyseparate. The play bumbles along untilLindsay goes to Edmonton with seventeen-year-oldDonny to open her ownboutique. Bob eventually goes in searchof her and finds her living with Donny.There follows a deplorable confrontation— deplorable because the playwright hasnot yet learned the art of confrontation.The dialogue does not lead naturally andin a well-balanced way to a climax. Thereader is irritated and bored by theclumsy construction of this confrontationand by the climaxes and anti-climaxes.Fortunately, for both characters andreader, the play ends shortly thereafter.Here is an example of a play whichshould not be published until the playwrighthas gained far more experiencein writing. Indeed the play needs to becompletely revised. It would appear thatthe playwright may have been in theprocess of learning how to write regionaldialect. Indeed the regional dialect187