Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

Molly Wood
27 Oct 1994 - The Toronto Star:
"Molly Wood goes the way of all flash"

Molly Wood goes the way of all flash

Molly Wood
By John Wimbs and Christopher Richards.
Directed by Ned Vukovic.
Sets and costumes by Charles Dunlop.
Lighting by Matthew Flawn.
Until Nov. 20 at Bathurst St. Theatre, 786 Bathurst St.

BY GEOFF CHAPMAN
DRAMA CRITIC

Hollywood and Buck House are probably today's leading sources of scandal.

Molly Wood, or rather "Molly Wood's Bush," the current Church-Wellesley area, was a contender almost 200 years ago, if you subscribe to the theatrical edifice constructed by authors John Wimbs and Christopher Richards.

Their world premiere, now playing at Bathurst St Theatre, is a recreation of the life of Alexander Wood, magistrate and merchant and possibly the region's first gay man. But it seems based on flimsy historical fact and fails to start the chain of events that might lead an audience suffering by proxy to draw the correct contemporary resonances about gay politics and gay pride.

It's an ambitious idea, but ultimately goes the way of all flash. It can't decide if it's melodrama, naturalism, drag comedy, fantasy or social commentary drawing mirth from class stereotypes and manners.

It is also slow, rambling, bitty and too long - three hours almost, including two intermissions - and although, as Kruschev said of nuclear weapons that "quantity has a special kind of quality," there's too much of everything here. And having all 28 parts, male and female, played by a cast of 13 males is an unnecessary conceit, though it contributes to the humor.

Both authors have described their piece as a "naughty Gothic romp," so jokes are emphasized with special attention to double-entendres, effete speech, campy gesture and over-loud bitchiness.

Then suddenly it's dreamland, or the love affair between Wood (Richard Partington) and cheeky apprentice Smith (Sean Power, a stern polemic from magistrate Powell (Don Allison) who speaks magisterially, the very symbol of the bogus piety of the middle class rulers of York, or the failed attempt to draw a strong parallel with the frustrated rebel, Powell's daughter Anne (played with appealing insouciance and sincerity by Mark Burgess).

This self-indulgent leap-frogging between belligerent, outlandish and sentimental is hard to absorb, reducing the clear events in Wood's life, with Richard Partington metamorphosing carefully from prissy, confused and lovelorn loner to passionate lover to cunning sexual exploiter to fugitive to charity worker to victor in a court libel suit, to mere episodes. And there's little sense of the danger in Wood's activities, a capital offence at the time.

There's lots of smoke, not much fire. Shots at elegant erudition are wide of the mark and the needed presentation of Wood and Powell fille as classical "outsiders" is unemphasized. But if romp's on your mind, then George Dawson as the sonorous Mrs. Powell and Louis Negin as a permanently soused Mrs. Stone play delightfully.

The rejigging of the theatre (the audience in fact sits where the stage is while multi-layered acting spaces are where the seats were) has been done wonderfully well, costumes and set are well-conceived and the period feel is captured, while musical interludes, occasionally mystifying, are executed with skill.

MOLLY WOOD: Louis Negin is delightful as a permanently soused Mrs. Stone and Richard Partington is Alexander Wood, namessake of play that's having its world premier at Bathurst St. Theatre.