Power play

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/04/2021 (2000 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A scion of wealth has his powerful position threatened when it emerges he may have had a sexual encounter with an underage girl.

So yes, Toronto playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s new work, Post-Democracy, has a topical sting, since its release coincides with a scandal south of the border involving scion/U.S. congressman Matt Gaetz.

Be assured, as the famous caveat goes, resemblance to any person living or dead is strictly coincidental.

In fact, Moscovitch’s spare, one-hour drama has been in the works for more than a decade, going back to when she was commissioned to write the play by former PTE artistic director Robert Metcalfe. Its origins also precede the HBO series Succession, which dives into the twisted family dynamics of a ruthless billionaire and his ambitious offspring as they vie for his position.

It just goes to show that some scenarios will always feel fresh, as long as there are privileged heels born with an abundance of silver spoons, but no moral compass.

This PTE production, available online worldwide, was made in observance of COVID-19 protocols on the PTE stage, directed by PTE artistic director Thomas Morgan Jones and filmed with a jittery sense of immediacy by Ice River Films, led by film director Sam Vint.

The protocol-adhering production doesn’t feel especially awkward. Set designer Brian Perchaluk sets the action on a quartet of physically distanced platforms where four performers keep at a safe remove from each other. But the platforms accent the more ineffable separations between the characters, starting in the first act, when Bill (Arne MacPherson), the CEO of an American car company, tells his CFO son Lee (Kristian Jordan) that the painting at corporate headquarters is a rental.

“It’s a Matisse,” Bill says.

“What’s that?” the liberal arts-illiterate Lee responds. MacPherson’s face betrays just a hint of guilt for his own parental failure.

The men are in an unnamed country — “polluted and poor, but it’s fine,” says Lee — negotiating the purchase of a company given the plausible name “Systemis.” The deal, however, may be in some jeopardy back at the home office, thanks to a brand manager with predatory tendencies toward the women in his circle.

The crisis necessitates the arrival of Bill’s adoptive daughter Justine (Stephanie Sy), also an executive with the company, more attuned to this particular breed of scandal.

Also showing is Shannon (Alicia Johnston), apparently a corporate troubleshooter who ironically has a friends-with-benefits relationship with Lee. During a moment of intimacy between them, Lee drunkenly drops another bombshell with potentially devastating ramifications for a company that CEO Bill is looking to leave, owing to an alarming health issue.

Moscovitch’s script is fat-free, with its fireworks reserved for embattled siblings Lee, oblivious to all but his own ambition, and Justine, wised up to the evil of the world, but compromised by her own position in the company/family.

As Lee, Jordan nicely essays a character who is out of his depth on any realm outside the boardroom, forever asking for clarification: “What? What?” Any sympathy for his character is tempered with an acknowledgement of his selfishness and hubris. Playing harder and sharper, Sy’s character is comparatively wised up, and so is understandably fierce at the disadvantage at which she finds herself because of her gender and race.

As Shannon, Johnston does some subtle work, not easy in a part that requires, in one scene, naughty sexuality morphing into horror.

It is MacPherson who anchors the work as the capitalist patriarch. Confronting his mortality, he finds himself trapped in a game where he, and men like him, made the rules. The advantage of the filmed format is that the close-up allows the full force of MacPherson’s poignant performance.

One takes whatever benefit one can in a pandemic situation where enjoying theatre from home feels kind of like renting art.

But rented or not, Post-Democracy is art nevertheless.

randall.king@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @FreepKing