Results tagged “wildmouth”

There is a moment near the end of the first act of Maureen Hunter's play Wild Mouth when Oliver Becker, playing the tortured Ukrainian WWI vet Bohdan, grabs Sarah Orenstein as proto-feminist anti-war Englishwoman Anna (pictured, left), douses her in pig's blood, and then rubs the animal's heart all over her face and body. It's a shocking and highly provocative moment, and seems to foreshadow a very dark second act. But that's not quite what we get. The play, very capably directed by R.H. Thomson, has some fascinating scenes as well as something genuinely profound to say about humanity's compulsion to war. But the second act seems somehow weak in its conviction, flirting with a darkness that is the logical conclusion of the events preceding it, and then backing away from it. You begin to think we're heading into Miss Julie territory, but we instead wind up in a typical rural Canadian drama.