Nicole Wilson and Hayden Finkelshtain in ‘Dead Elephants’, Photo by Connor Price-Kelleher
In 1903, an elephant named Topsy was electrocuted. The event was public and it was filmed by Thomas Edison. You can watch it on YouTube. It’s brief and, more for its stark banality than any gruesomeness, quietly unnerving. Dead Elephants, an ambitious production from Good Old Neon, is about her. Some other dead elephants too. There is also a pigeon with a surprisingly shrewd and sardonic inner life. Hilarious and heartbreaking humans figure here as well, wrestling with each other and… death.
Livings things die. It is a mundane, blunt fact—perfectly demonstrable, unambiguous, and rather awful. This play invites us into a series of episodic scenes between people and animals and their thematically linked experiences with this great equalizer. Written by Alexander Offord, the epic narrative is less concerned with historical accuracy than thematic resonance as it pulls together three turn-of-the-ninteenth-century storylines (featuring a couple of famous dead elephants) and weaves them into the contemporary struggle of a married couple processing the loss of their infant child. At first disparate, these eventually coalesce into a deeply funny, poignant and whimsical examination of ethics, mortality and grief.
The overall aesthetic of director Nicole Wilson’s staging has Big Top energy. An arena set-up (designed by her and Kris Van Soelen) with low pony walls topped by light bulbs frames the drama as circus ring spectacle. The vast and bare stage is broken up by modular units on casters that further the carnivalesque aesthetic as the actors push and pull them into various configurations.
As the savvy, contemptuous pigeon, Allan Cooke is a goofy yet vaguely sinister presence with his cheap rubber mask and cryptic musings. He’s the most confounding aspect until, quite late, he provides some valuable insight. Between them, Hayden Finkelshtain and Wilson play eleven vivid and colourful characters. A few highlights are Topsy’s suave and pontificating owner (a boastful, liquor-swilling capitalist), and a conflicted electrical technician tasked with engineering the awful deed.
The most fleshed out and emotionally compelling pair are the grieving parents. It is through them that Wilson and Finkelshtain paint an authentic portrait of pain and bewilderment. As she retreats further into herself and embraces whatever new thing she’s becoming after their tragic loss, his abject pleas for normalcy and connection are truly wrenching.
At just under three hours, it feels a little more sprawling than it needs to be. I could do without the storyline that follows two French soldiers breaking into the zoo with plans to kill and eat an elephant. The pair of deliberately showy MCs, sporting sparkly coats and stilted gesturing, also fall a little flat. As written, I understand their Brechtian purpose, but there just isn’t a persuasive enough comedic or narrative engine for their schtick.
One striking example of theatrical artifice that feels rich and purposeful is lighting designer Connor Price-Kelleher‘s use of the bulbs that separate the stage from the audience. Topsy’s story occurs during the early days of harnessed electricity; her “humane” execution—and Edison’s film of it—were, at the time, a prestigious and rousing symbol of technological modernity. In a clever and ominous bit of stagecraft, a few key interactions with these light bulbs have eerie resonance.
Though it could use some refining and runtime reduction, Dead Elephants is exceptionally well-executed and makes good on most of its grand ambitions, both conceptual and emotive.
Dead Elephants
running March 7 to 17, 2024
Native Earth’s Aki Studio (585 Dundas Street East)
running time: 165 minutes (with intermission)
Nicole Wilson and Hayden Finkelshtain in ‘Dead Elephants’, Photo by Connor Price-Kelleher