Actors give jazzy rhythm to play about platonic friendship

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This article was published 10/11/2023 (1056 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before Diane Flacks and Richard Greenblatt take the stage at the start of Pals, their new two-hander at the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, the mood is set by a soundtrack of tightly spun jazz, a promise to the audience that the show it’s about to see is very much about the give and the take, the push and the pull, and the synchronization required to play together in the finicky duet of platonic friendship.

Once the music fades, Greenblatt and Flacks, friends and collaborators for more than 30 years, walk down the stairs on either side of the Berney Theatre from the rear doors to the stage, passing through the crowd and creating an immediate sense of familiarity: they are just like you and me.

Oh god, they’re just like you and me.

Greenblatt and Flacks met in the early 1990s while working on a production at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre, but instead of building their story within the world they know best, they transplant their opening act to a tech office setting, with Greenblatt greeting a frazzled Flacks as she swaggers into a job interview under the impression she’s already been hired.

It’s an awkward start for Richard and Diane, who forgo naming their characters, but without much hesitation, they become engaged to one another in an office marriage, playing work wife and husband without any fear that the partnership will ever take a detour down a romantic cul-de-sac: Diane is gay and Richard is straight, but by his own admission, proud to look just a little bit gay on his light-blue motorbike.

In the first scene, under the guise of the job interview, they exchange their vows to one another.

“You want a boss?” a flustered Richard asks Diane, who isn’t excited about the company’s flat leadership hierarchy, given her experience with a failed feminist collective.

“I want someone who’s accountable. Like, if you’re about to make a huge mistake, I hope I can speak my mind, and that you’ll do something about it,” she says.

“We’re not afraid of conflict here,” Richard says. “Conflict can create positive change.”

In real life, Greenblatt and Flacks say they have fought only by way of teasing, a pair of sarcastic pseudo-siblings who’ve spent so much time together that they know which buttons to press and which to keep behind a layer of bulletproof glass.

Their romantic partners understand that they’re not themselves without the other person.

But in Pals, Or Scenes From a Friendship, the co-writers and co-stars don’t have such a luxury. Richard’s “not-wife” Leah — an unseen, long-term girlfriend who lacks a ring but keeps Richard encircled in a steely chokehold — is intimidated by her not-husband’s connection with Diane.

Richard and Diane, or R&D as they’re referred to in the script, have to tread carefully, even when they go for an innocent jaunt through the park.

“I feel like I’m cheating, and we’re not even having sex,” Richard says in disbelief. “We’re having lunch!”

Directed by Siminovich Prize winner Jillian Keiley, Flacks and Greenblatt share an undeniably loving onstage chemistry, with an interdependence that mirrors their offstage relationship.

Flacks’ character is jagged and edgy, carrying herself with a frailty that belies a latent inner strength, willingly — and even gleefully — calling out Richard’s BS.

Greenblatt’s Richard is antsy and anal, egocentric and flighty, a man who favours inertia over risk and recklessly fears abandonment.

You will recognize them.

Running a brisk 85 minutes, and spanning more than 25 years of its characters’ lifetimes, including births, deaths, divorces, and affairs, Pals is strengthened by the actors’ tit-for-tat delivery, heightened by a continuation of the jazzy motif throughout the physical setting of the production.

On a kitchenette set designed by Adam Parboosingh, pots and pans dangle above a wooden island. In a creative risk that pays off, the characters only interact briefly with the kitchenette, while a chef (percussionist and composer Greg Hawco) uses the cookware as a drum kit: a wine glass becomes a vessel for instability; a salad bowl conveys vulnerability and desire and in lieu of leafy greens and vinaigrette.

When the rhythm of the production shifts to a free-jazz improvisation, it faces some prop-related challenges. A square table and two bentwood chairs are used as stand-ins for a variety of objects, and while it may be obvious to Flacks and Greenblatt what those objects are, there are moments when the audience hasn’t a clue, severing the connection the actors have worked so hard to establish.

Still, there is a lightness and a joy to Greenblatt and Flacks’ movements, choreographed by Mary Ellen MacLean, that can’t be overlooked. These are two toddlers building castles in the sandbox or two teenagers playing Never Have I Ever.

In Pals, Greenblatt and Flacks are contending with the universal challenge of growing up, growing together and growing apart.

They’re just like you and me, for better and for worse.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com