October 27, 2010
By Kevin Heckman
Political theatre, as an overt form hasn’t been around that long. For the Greeks, only comedy could deal with contemporary issues. Since then we’ve really only seen a few types of political theatre. Brecht went for the intellectual polemic. There are author advocacy plays (think Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart). And of course there’s satire, perhaps the oldest form to be applied to political theatre. But theatre’s strong suit is its ability to evoke empathy. A well told story can bring home the plights of vastly different people and circumstances.
And that’s where Scorched succeeds.
Written by Wajdi Mouawad and translated by Linda Gabriau this mystery gradually unfolds the intense pain behind one woman’s experiences in an unnamed country that fell into civil war. Nazira (Diana Simonzadeh) has passed away leaving behind her estranged twin children, Janine (Lacy Katherine Campbell) and Simon (Nick Cimino). Her dying wish was that they find their father, whom they have always been told was dead, and their brother, whom they never knew they had. At first resistant to the idea, their mother’s notary Alphonse (Fredric Stone in a charmingly eccentric role) gradually brings around first Janine and then Simon to the idea. The twisted story they unfold reveals an entire side of their mother they never knew existed.
This is no light evening’s entertainment, clocking in at around 2:45. Mouawad sets out to tell Nazira’s story, both in flashback and as uncovered by her children. And it’s not a pretty story. Nazira went through some pretty awful experiences that explain her difficulty with her children and the fact that she refused to speak for the final five years of her life.
Director Dale Heinen has brought together an earnest, talented cast who don’t back away from the material. Adam Poss and Justin James Farley are both excellent in a variety of roles, both large and small. Fawzia Mirza gives a strong performance as Nazira’s friend during the war. Campbell and Cimino do nice work with a pair of underdeveloped characters. Stone just about steals the show. He gets all the best lines and makes the most of them.
Because Heinen has brought out such achingly honest performances, the production avoids pathos or melodrama. Instead we get a simple story of one woman’s struggle with overwhelming events. And it gives us, as witnesses, an inkling as to what it might have been like to survive such horrible events. Perhaps it will make us think differently the next time we read of the plight of civilians in Darfur or Afghanistan or Rwanda. And that makes it successful, both as theatre and as political theatre.