Night Sky: Production drags on despite some good performances
Reviewed by Iris Winston
05
FEB
Categories: Community Theatre
Photo: Wendy Wagner
Photo: Wendy Wagner
When words are the primary currency, a play about the protagonist’s loss of words is destined to be a major challenge.
Add to this the continuing parallelism between black holes in the cosmos and the jumble in the brain of an aphasic patient and the problems associated with Susan Yankowitz’s 1991 play Night Sky are multiplied.
She apparently wrote the script as a tribute to her mentor (and the director of the premiere in New York) Joseph Chaikin, who suffered aphasia following a stroke during open-heart surgery. He imposed three conditions on her script: that the heroine should be a woman; the aphasia should be the result of a car accident [big bang?] and that Night Sky should focus on astronomy.
Yankowitz complied and the result is almost a how-to manual for family and friends responding to someone with aphasia. Worthy as this may be, it is somewhat low in entertainment value, even if the brain and the cosmos are the last two remaining mysteries in the universe, as scientist Stephen Hawking claimed.
The Kanata Theatre production, directed by Alain Chamsi, appropriately sets the scene with a series of shots of the night sky. The return to earth is less successful. It begins at the tail end of a lecture by astronomy professor, Anna (Tania Carrière) — standing behind a lectern that looks as though it could stand a coat of paint.