Spitballing and myth-making, play winks at storytelling process

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This article was published 31/05/2024 (525 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A writers’ room on deadline is a disgusting place, filled with hostile creatures sequestered from the world they’re so desperate to explore through the seemingly straightforward act of storytelling.

Stories were first shared around flickering fires and on the walls of caves, serving as communiqués of life and death, predator and prey, of creation and whatever doom came next in the endless scroll of humankind.

We’ve heard that before.

In The Antipodes, Annie Baker’s absurdly entertaining anthropological treatise on narrative structure, the playwright transfers the myth-making to an office setting, where a group of eight — seven men, one woman — spin their wheely chairs in an endless cycle of oversharing underdeveloped thoughts.

When it was staged for the first time off-Broadway in 2017, the play was considered a cautionary tale. Seven years later, in a memorable production by local company the 28th Minute, it can be classified as a depressingly accurate, vibrant depiction of the degradation of storytelling to the point of capitalistic meaninglessness.

Directed by George Toles, the production benefits immediately from Jane Hilder’s set design, which feels typical, almost guaranteeing it to be the exact opposite. The set is configured around a conference table. On the end where the audience sits, there is no chair, establishing our presence in the room where the sausage is made.

Above the table hangs a halo studded with translucent bulbs with filaments exposed, lighting designer Monique Gauthier clearly conveying the primary visual indicators of ideation.

To the right is a whiteboard untouched by Expo markers, and to the left is a potentially teetering tower of cardboard boxes that either contain or once contained cans of a lemon beverage called Refresh. Free drinks, free snacks — they’re usually attempts to placate the labourer.

The room is chaired by Sandy (Darcy Fehr), a man with no ideas of his own but enough confidence to position himself as something of a guru.

Sandy was on staff for a successful program — it’s never clear whether we’re talking television — called Heathens. The strategy on that project was to draw inspiration from lived experience. Now, Sandy and his team have been instructed to recapture lightning in a bottle, leading to a brainstorm clouded by high expectation and fleeting inspirations.

Faintly troubled by the spectre of a former writer who refused to buy in, Sandy is intent on enshrouding this room in a “cone of silence,” a reference to the 1960s spy spoof Get Smart. The cone is a constricting construct; once inside, the writers reveal their turmoil in search of Sandy’s approval.

As Eleanor, the only woman in the room, a strong Kerri Woloszyn holds the moral compass in her hand as the needle goes berserk. As the tragic Dave, a shoeless Stephen Sim brags about his sophomoric sexual exploits. Whenever Cuinn Joseph is served an opportunity to chew scenery as Danny M1, he bursts with glee. Jesse Bergen’s Josh is a bumbling student of the Kurt Vonnegut school, speaking with twisted tongue about the shape of story and often repeating himself with misplaced emphasis.

While each of these performers is solid, other cast members are given opportunities for more showy displays.

The first to seize the moment is Stanlee Arches, making his professional stage debut as Danny M2, an outlier character whose prosaic simplicity is ripe for collegial mockery.

When asked to share his biggest regret, Danny M2 tells a cruelty-free story about working on a chicken farm that Arches seems to be making up as he goes along.

A terrific Jane Walker portrays the assistant Sarah with a morose glee and stopwatch-perfect timing. While Arches closes the first act with quiet skill, Walker gives the second a jolt of electricity when she tells the gothic fairy tale of her character’s grim childhood.

During her monologue, she is cast in the spotlight against a black curtain, a staging reminiscent of confessional, alternative comedy specials that call into question the use of trauma as a source of creative inspiration.

That idea is more directly represented when Kevin Ramberran cuts loose. Playing a manic typist named Brian, he gets his showcase when he breaks the writing process down into tribalist gobbledegook, later making himself suffer in a breathlessly hairy dance of attempted self-discovery.

Though he is quiet for the bulk of the two-hour run, as Adam, Justin Fry unleashes a remarkable second-act monologue, proselytizing with a mash-up of global creation myths that begins with a cow named Bessie who evacuates much of the world through an opening on her rear end.

After delivering his minutes-long sermon, Adam is asked if he remembers what he said.

“I don’t know,” he replies. “I was kind of just bullshitting.”

Aren’t we all?

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com