On Thursday, September 19, The Belfry Theatre premiered the English language premiere of Quebecois play From Alaska, and the results were mixed.
The story is ambitious, following the relationship between a lesbian librarian and a local teenage boy who breaks into her house. Both have just experienced a heartbreaking loss, and as their understanding of each other grows they get more out of sync with time.
This is the kind of play I love, and I was primed to love this one as well—but I walked out of the theatre only loving parts of it, and was haunted by the feeling that I maybe would have preferred to read this script instead of see it performed.
Starting with what was strong, the set design was fantastic. The entire play takes place in the librarian’s living room, and sitting in my seat on the balcony I felt that I was in that room with her. Some key moments happen with actors calling from another part of the house, and the layout made it feel that the characters were simply stepping into another room rather than off the stage. It wasn’t overladen with props, but still felt lived in. I felt I got a strong sense of who the librarian was from the space she occupied.
The script was also compelling, if a bit unfocused. When the people we love leave us, time becomes a different creature. Seeing these two characters make strange bids for connection in the midst of heartbreak while the world seems to come apart around them was incredibly moving. Many moments were heart wrenching and connective, although those moments of connection never got to cross the finish line. Whenever I started to feel I was getting my footing with the themes and character arcs, another element would come in from left field and disconnect me from the story. I don’t know if this was a product of translation, or how much of this would still be true in the original French, but it was jarring and I kept being reminded of the fact that I was watching a play rather than getting lost in the journey. The whole time I kept feeling like there was something I was supposed to be getting and I just wasn’t.
Another barrier to connection was, unfortunately, the acting. I don’t know if these character choices came from the actors themselves or from the directing, but the whole time I felt I was watching actors read lines rather than people processing and living with their emotions. The performances lacked vulnerability in a way that made me hungry. I didn’t know how to reconcile the intense subject matter they were discussing with the even and consistent tone throughout. There were many monologues with peaks and valleys of drama in the words themselves, but the delivery was emotionally the same from beginning to end. There was a wall of ice between the audience and the characters’ hearts.
But, again, the nature of translation leaves me hesitant to blame any one aspect of the play for not sticking the landing. I don’t know what it was, but something—the script, the translation, the directing, the acting, or some combination thereof—gave me so much to chew on and so little to digest.
From Alaska
Various times and days, until Sunday, October 13
Pay what you can pricing options, The Belfry
belfry.bc.ca