Review: The List – Nightwood / Canadian Stage
By Adam Collier
By Adam Collier
The List is a one-woman show is playing at the Berkley Street Downstairs Theatre. The show runs until November 6th and is a co-production between Nightwood and Canadian Stage.
When the lights come-up, we are looking at a woman that appears near middle-aged, in her kitchen. All the surfaces are white. The scene looks almost institutional.
The woman (played by Allegra Fulton) begins in a quiet, exasperated tone: “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even lay a finger on her. But she’s dead because of me.”
The List quickly digresses from that confession to a much larger one in which this woman (“The Woman” in the credits) reveals the emotional minutiae of her life. Much of this is made sense with to-do lists.
The lists include everything from items to-do for her two elementary school aged children, things to-do around the house, to random errands. At times the lists – in their length and detail – seemed excessive. But at the same time, there didn’t seem to be a single excessive item.
I think Ms. Fulton does a great job expressing the sense of obligation, frustration and exhaustion that comes with the lists. It seems clear – from the way she self flagellates with guilt – that her character has very high expectations of herself.
For all its regret and intensity, though, there are pockets of humor throughout the work. For me, the biggest laughs came when The Woman describes escaping from her kids on Wednesday afternoons (her one break in the week).
On the night I went (last Thursday), the crowd was mostly women. I was talking to a few people after the show, and the material had strong emotional resonance:“Oh I think we’ve all had those feelings y’know?” one woman told me, “where you make a list, and have so much todo, but still feel terribly guilty if you miss an item.”
Kimberly Purtell has managed to find a huge palette of tones in her white lighting design. More than I have ever seen. They accented the work beautifully, I thought. And from moment-to-moment, supports the emotional intensity and sublime, almost ethereal poetry of Jennifer Tremblay’s text (translated by Shelley Tepperman from the French).
And it’s no exaggeration to say that Denyse Karn’s set is breath-taking. A few woman in the row ahead of me gasped when Ms. Fulton pulled open the fridge door to reveal the contents.
Kelly Thornton’s direction is, as one patron exclaimed “exquisite! Absolutely exquisite!”
If you have a chance, please see The List. It’s a terrific work in every respect, and if opening night is any indication, likely going to be hard to get tickets to see.
Details
– The List plays at the Berkley Downstairs Theatre (26 Berkley Street, one block west of Parliament Street, a half block south of Front Street)
– Tickets range in price between $22 and $49
– The show runs approximately an hour with no intermission, and begins at eight o’clock Monday through Friday; with a matinee on Wednesday at one-thirty, and one on Saturday at two.
– Tickets can be purchased online or by phone, or at the box office.
