Philip Diamond, Jaiden French, Kimia Kalantari, Jack Emerson Mosney, Kaleb Piper, Dale Rideout, Katya Podlesnaia & Chrisevina Tsoura | Photo by Jenae Toorie
Presented by TMI & Co
Cusp is Chekov, specifically—Uncle Vanya, sort of. It’s a contemporary riff on it. Some of these stand-in characters have been aged down and middled-aged angst about wasted potential has been replaced with dread for the future, so it makes sense for this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed generation of graduating acting students from George Brown Theatre School to be inhabiting this classical portrait of ennui. It’s a collaborative effort. And it works, really works, a hell of a lot better than a student-crafted Fringe show riffing on Chekhov should.
Created by director Tanya Rintoul and the company (Philip Diamond, Jaiden French, Kimia Kalantari, Jack Emerson Mosney, Kaleb Piper, Dale Rideout, Katya Podlesnaia and Chrisevina Tsoura), this ensemble effort fluctuates gracefully (for the most part) between sincerity and stylization. We open on a game of Monopoly (cleverly significant) spread out across an exceptionally wide table—the communal centrepiece of this cottage. Gathered haphazardly about it, in a subtly expressive tableaux, are an extended collection of relatives and friends who will go on to kvetch about their lives.
At the top, Mosney’s Mikhail is holding court with a rant about billionaires, the greedy mis-allotment of resources and the dumpster fire that is current capitalism. The Chekovian vibes are strong from the get-go, with this impassioned rhetoric about the ills of society. I don’t mean to discredit any of the performers here, all of whom I found exceptionally compelling in ebbs and flows, but full disclosure: I’ve been low-key tracking some of this group since The Ensemble (a few appear in this Fringe’s God Save the Sodomites too) and I’m especially drawn to Mosney’s nuanced consistency as an actor.
Other standouts for me include: Diamond’s hilariously expressive clown of a curmudgeon, Zander. Piper’s abject and dejected Ivan. And Tsoura’s Sophie, who manages to be an entirely captivating, grounded presence, all the while selling a lot of detailed business here as she goes through the motions of baking a cake live in front of us, complete with all the cumbersome mess and clean-up.
In line with its source inspiration, the story unfolds in a series of pairings and group scenes where heartfelt, languid moments exist alongside boisterous, chaotic revelry. The naturalistic scenes are beautifully realized and moments are afforded space to breath. Though a few of the expressionistic segments are beautiful, the lyricism doesn’t always land. An early sequence during a card game, for instance, where characters sporadically shout their inner thoughts out, fell flat for me, especially when the artifice is thrown into such jarring relief.
I’m a sucker for these types of stories, where a group of people inhabit a very specific space together, in close proximity. This cottage felt like a real place to me, oppressive and comforting in equal measure. The final, bittersweet moment is Chekovian perfection and entirely earned. Again, 60-minute Fringe Chekhov-lite should be excruciating and it’s a credit to this team that Cusp is so remarkably good.
