Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

Stuck
21 Apr 1997 - The Globe and Mail:
"Raw, frantic Stuck a nineties howl" (by Kate Taylor)

Raw, frantic Stuck at nineties howl

THEATRE REVIEW

STUCK
Written by David Rubinoff
Directed by Chad Dembski
Starring Sean Power
Rating: ***

Reviewed by Kate Taylor

In the small theatres, monologues about unemployed actors are a dime a dozen, as young creators with more talent than life experience scrounge around for material and find only themselves. David Rubinoff's Stuck rises above that genre with raw poetry and frantic energy. When it appeared at the 1996 Toronto Fringe, surrounded by one-man shows, it instantly demanded attention. Now, after a brief off-Broadway run, it makes a smoothtransition to Theatre Passe Muraille's Backspace.

Jack is a gay actor - out of work, sex, cash and dope. As he scrounges for all four on the mean streets of Toronto he encounters a cast of surreal characters. A panhandler shows him how it's done; a theatre director snubs him; a lonely woman buys him a drink; an armed robber steals his last possessions.

Like them, Jack is capable of small highs - he rescues a young woman who is being harassed on the subway - and awesome lows - he fellates his drug dealer in exchange for a hit. Rubinoff produces this very hard if realistic view of humanity with a stream of poetry inspired by Beat and rap, seamlessly incorporating passages of hallucination and dream into the already surreal narrative.

To make the text seem honest rather than self-indulgent and gritty rather than downright offensive, requires a particularly finely tuned performance. Under the direction of Chad Dembski, actor Sean Power makes Stuck as much his creation as it is Rubinoff's. He bounds about the stage incessantly, deftly moving with unflagging energy from Jack's story to the many accents of the people he meets. He captures the manic spirit, the desperation and the loneliness in his character, never swerving from his faults put never losing sight, of his charm either.

With more time to work on the staging of the show, Dembski and Power have made the multicharacter scenes particularly vivid in this version. Jack's encounter in an alleyway with two Mormons is now one of Stuck's most powerful moments. With Jack cornered in a square of light, Power neatly and amusingly distinguishes him from his two proselytizing interrogators, one of whom conveniently has a stutter. To those who follow Canadian drama, the scene in which he tries to audition for a director - a mini-satire of the Toronto theatre world all in itself - remains the funniest bit.

Conversely, I now find some of the dream sequences overwritten - Rubinoff has expanded the script slightly since the Fringe - so that their power is waning rather than building as they move toward their conclusion. For a first-time viewer, however, Stuck must remain a real shocker, one of those brief evenings of theatre that grab you by the throat and drag you into their world, whether or not it's a place vou wish to go.