HARRY'S
CHRISTMAS
by Steven Berkoff
Carousel Theatre Studio
Granville Island
December16-25
604-257-0366
www.festivalboxoffice.com
$12.00/$10.00
Since ‘tis the season to be not only jolly but sentimental
and even saccharine, methinks a bracing dash of realistic gloom
might provide some welcome dissonance. Cut to Granville Island,
where Carousel Theatre is presenting A
Christmas Carol at the
Waterfront. Right across the street, ironically, in Carousel’s
own building,
(r)evolution theatre company is staging the anti-Christmas
Carol. A bitter antidote to the sweet, British playwright Steven
Berkoff’s Harry’s
Christmas says “humbug” to
every conceivable notion of Yuletide cheer. And unlike Dickens’ Scrooge,
Berkoff’s Harry doesn’t recant. This play dares to
say that Christmas time is simply the most depressing time of
the year.
Four days before Christmas, alone in his dismal flat talking
to himself, 45 year old Harry stares at the measly six Xmas cards
he’s managed to amass. He realizes they make up the sum
of his wasted, insignificant life: “Christ was born so
I can count my cards.” Sitting in his naugahide chair in
front of the TV he hates because it reminds him of his mother
sitting alone in her flat in front of her TV, Harry is tormented
by the season’s demands—be happy, socialize, celebrate.
His only real connection with the world is the telephone, and
much of the play’s one act is taken up with his trying
to work up the courage to call an old girlfriend or a couple
he barely knows. When he’s not talking about the phone
he’s talking on it, often to his mother whom he ultimately
betrays. Christmas minus three days is even worse, and as the
play moves inexorably towards C-day, Harry’s desperation,
loneliness and pain steadily intensify.
At moments—though not many—I was reminded of two
of my favourite depressive literary loners: Dostoevsky’s
Underground Man (“I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man.
I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased”)
and Beckett’s Krapp, who replay their failed lives over
and over, picking at the scabs and relishing the pain while trying
to find some explanation for their own futility. The key to those
texts is the literary artistry that transforms and transcends
the depressing subject matter. Berkoff, I’m sorry to say,
shows little such artistry here, and the result is not just depressing
but dull. Harry’s monologue and stage actions are prosaic,
repetitive, unimaginative and banal.
As Harry, Tim Hine commits admirably to the character’s
growing desperation, but it would take an extraordinarily accomplished
actor to make this material more compelling. Co-directors Jonathan
Ryder and John Murphy, who collaborated on last year’s
darkly brilliant The Heretic, written and performed by Murphy,
offer little help. They’d have been better off writing
their own dyspeptic downer. Jeez, I’m gonna go have a drink.
Merry whatever.
Jerry Wasserman
Harry’s Christmas runs until December 25th. All shows
at 8:00 p.m. Harry’s Christmas is the ONLY theatre show
in Vancouver that will be playing on Christmas Day. |