culture
Imprints Leaves a Mark
Theatre Gargantua showcases physicality, visual tricks, and hereditary horrors in its new production.
Stephanie Belding and Michael Spence in Theatre Gargantua's world premiere of IMPRINTS. Photo by Michael Cooper.
Imprints
Factory Studio Theatre
(125 Bathurst Street)
November 9 to 26, Tuesdays to Sundays at 8 p.m., Sunday matinees at 2:30 p.m.
$20–$25
We owe our stubbornness to our mother, our bad knees to our father, and we’re told we have the nose of our great-great-aunt Gertrude. But far worse traits can be passed on through the blood of our family members. In fact, they can be downright sinister and disturbing.
If a large nose or stiff knee is all that you have to complain about in terms of genetics, be glad you’re not Lily (Stephanie Belding), the main character in Theatre Gargantua’s Imprints, a new work by Michael Spence on now at Factory Studio Theatre. She suffers from an unknown and incurable disease, one that has killed each generation on her father’s side for as far back as she can remember. Without a family of her own, she chooses a risky procedure in which her doctors will suspend her body until they can find a cure. It plunges her, and the audience, into an Alice in Wonderland–like dream world where she discovers that she has received far more than just bad genetics from her ancestors.
With only a tiny stage and a few sheets of fabric, director Jacquie P.A. Thomas turns Factory Studio into a surreal and haunting underworld (or, we should say, innerworld) with lighting by Laird MacDonald, sound by Michael Laird and William Fallon, and projections by Cameron Davis. Unbounded by the limits of reality, the design team creates magic tricks right in front of the eyes of the audience—a trio of mischievous creatures (Cosette Derome, Conor Green, and Kat Sandler) appear and disappear as if out of thin air, the spritely guide Had (Michael Spence) peeks from the branches of a transparent tree in one scene and speaks through a screen of smoke in another, and the devilish Than (Ron Kennell) glows a supernatural blue while floating angrily above Lily. There’s even a gender-bender in the blink of an eye when Lily transforms into a man with the help of a large piece of fabric waved back and forth on the stage, flowing as smoothly as liquid.
The success of these magic tricks can be attributed to the cast’s blocking and Theatre Gargantua’s mandate for physically demanding performances. But not only their physicality added to the eeriness of the world of Lily’s subconscious, but also their voices. At key points, narration and echoes are projected through speakers, but most of the soundtrack comprises vocal compositions created by Thomas and the ensemble. The thumping beats of these choruses build tension and insinuate that Lily is forever under surveillance by the other characters in this world, even if they are out of sight.
If anything needs improvement in Imprints, it is Spence’s script, which begins intimidatingly cryptic but ends predictably. However, as tough as it is for the audience to wrap our heads around this abnormal land and characters, we have a saving grace in Lily herself, who is just trying to wrap her head around them too. Moments of catharsis—like telling the three troublemakers to “just fuck off, okay!”—are incredibly gratifying, even though we don’t actually want them to leave for long. The rhyming taunts of those three characters alone are worth the trip to Factory. As Spence says himself in his own poetic performance as Had, “Name a scene that cannot be better with a little metered time.”
Only an hour long, Imprints is a short but exciting journey through Lily’s family tree. However, disappointingly, the story ends less dramatically than the impressive theatrics of the show’s characters and design elements would suggest. Theatre Gargantua has again, though, created magical images with strong performances from the entire ensemble. We’d hate to have Lily’s family line, but we’re happy to observe it.