Tania Alvarado, Slowly…, Periphery Theatre, d: Mieko Ouchi, ph: Jill Watamaniuk
“When a show can make you ponder the futility of free will, break your heart with tragic loss and make you weep with hysterical laughter (during the death scene of a big brown bear, no less), you know you’ve found something special… Trying to explain playwright José Teodoro’s Slowly, an exchange is taking place is like trying to explain a particularly vivid dream. It all makes sense when you’re swimming around inside it, but when you wake up and try to translate these profound but illogical images and emotions into the mundane language of the so-called real world, it just doesn’t work.”
Steve Tilly, The Edmonton Sun
Slowly, an exchange is taking place
A good position at a hospital; a kind, loving professor fiancé: Elisabeth’s life seemed so settled before she discovered the woman drifting in the ravine near her house. Now she’s playing hooky from work and being recruited as an actor in a wildly ambitious movie helmed by a megalomaniacal bear. Somewhere a nameless old man tells old stories about freedom, sleep, and the way things vanish. Somewhere a conflicted detective uses unorthodox methods. Between each place the woman keeps drifting, while Elisabeth’s existence turns dream-like and dangerous.
“You’re baffled, but you never stop being fascinated. The connections are just out of your grasp, but you’re seduced by the mystery of it all… It’s a film noir crossed with a memory play. It’s a murder mystery where the corpse just won’t stay put and keeps infiltrating the witnesses. It’s a fantasy, triggered by real-life images. It’s a play with its own flamboyant sense of humour, where the autopsy happens to a Tom Waits accompaniment on the radio, and then cuts to a film set where The End of History is underway, starring a pretentious actor-turned-auteur who likes to be called Genghis Khan, dressed up like a bear. I loved it.”
Liz Nicholls, The Edmonton Journal
“The plot winds through dreams, a movie set directed by a man in a bear suit, a failing relationship and painful revelations. Complicated emotions are revealed through simple gestures. Beautiful.”
Mari Sasano, See Magazine