Sochi Fried, Nancy McAlear and Rose Troung in “Erased”, Photo Henry Chan
Erased is genuinely funny, astonishingly so, despite how perfectly it embodies the bleak, utilitarian grind of late-capitalism. Presented by Open Heart Surgery Theatre and Theatre Passe Muraille, the themes and aesthetic of this lyrical and darkly comic mediation reminded me of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil. Both set their dystopian nightmares in a similarly absurdist industrial hellscape. Where that film’s story fixates on the Kafkaesque bureaucracy of a totalitarian state, writer-director Coleen Shirin MacPherson’s surrealist portrait is all about the grunt work and tormented psyche of a society mass producing-consuming itself into oblivion.
Seated at an assembly line, we meet three workers at a greeting card factory. Dutifully, they poke, tweak and stamp at their respective tasks. Alix Sideris’ movement direction evokes the monotony of production in robotic motions, punctuated by the spasms and yearning gestures of authentic humanity bursting through the routine. Designer Nick Blais has devised uncomfortably angled scenic elements that echo this human triptych—three glitchy florescent lamps and three vast panels of craft paper loom ominously. Industrial chutes, a massive vent and an incinerator off to the side fully establish the stifling atmosphere.
Margie (Nancy McAlear) is a maternal figure and the most dedicated to maintaining a facade of pleasant efficiency. She barely cracks until her big maniacal rant, but even before that unhinged tirade, McAlear drops unsettling hints that she’s not ok, just determined to conform to a system that has broken her. Grace, a sincere and vulnerable portrayal by Sochi Fried, plugs away enthusiastically, though she’s covertly susceptible to… ideas. In poetic asides, she describes her dreams of freedom. Kat Kahn’s adorably awkward René is the confused newcomer, unable to adjust to the strict regimen. When she questions the screams echoing into the night, she becomes one of “the disappeared”—rebellious people who have vanished under suspicious circumstances.
She’s methodically replaced with Oliver (Rose Tuong) who appears suddenly. From “the fields” (a barren stretch of scorched earth), Oliver is just as unable to adjust to the pointless busy-work, though they have a defiant streak that sparks the first real sense of hope. Tuong gives the most quietly compelling performance. Seeing them confront McAlear’s dictatorial and increasingly delusional Margie, with an understated authority of their own, is tense and exhilarating.
Throughout, a silent ensemble represent “the disappeared.” These resilient spectres lurk in shadow, creeping in dark corners and up in the catwalk.
The world building, in both MacPherson’s resonant text and Blais’ lighting and set, is very persuasive. The whole creative team finds all the right places for vagueness and specificity. There are gritty details and fanciful abstractions working in tandem to suggest a disquieting reality. This is a future where we all play our part in the systematic extermination of people, animals and vegetation to accommodate the steel and concrete of an unsustainable and purposeless cycle of worthless productivity. In one of the show’s most simple and evocative theatrical effects, soot gradually mars the surface of those panels of white craft paper—a eerie manifestation of the bad air and charred earth encroaching on the scene.
A thrilling surge of insurrectionary energy leaves the stage in tatters and debris. The final striking image—seen only as a brief, insurgent flash—beautifully pays-off the narrative’s recurrent motif of birds and the delicate freedom they represent. It is such an inspired and potent moment, lasting only long enough to catch in our imagination where it can take full flight.
Erased
running November 20 to 30, 2024
Theatre Passe Muraille, Mainspace (16 Ryerson Ave)
running time: 90 minutes (no intermission)
Zina Ahmed, Dylan Carter, Jenna Green, Melissa Kiley, Emma Ly, Zoe Magirius and Jobina Sitoh in “Erased”, Photo by Henry Chan