Natalie Inga Gauthier in Easter Island.Rob Galbraith
- Easter Island
- Written by David van Belle
- Directed by Jamie Dunsdon
- Starring Natalie Inga Gauthier
- At the Motel Theatre, Arts Commons, in Calgary through March 31
Can a set be the star of the show? Quite possibly, if the set in question is T. Erin Gruber’s magical design for Easter Island.
One part forest, one part multimedia topographical map, Gruber’s set transformed the Motel, inside Calgary’s Arts Commons, into a kind of living 3-D map this past Friday night, when Natalie Inga Gauthier performed the world premiere of Edmonton playwright David van Belle’s ambitious, cerebral monologue Easter Island.
Gauthier played three different characters from three different eras – the past, the present and the future – all mashed into a single 90-minute story session.
Rather than using blackouts, or even cross-fades, Gauthier would start a sentence as one character, in the present, and finish it as a different one, speaking from the future – a technique director (and Verb Theatre artistic director) Jamie Dunsdon, who developed and produced Easter Island, describes as “van Belle character drift.”
It was a case of starting with a small picture, then getting bigger, then going all omniscient narrator to give us the God’s-eye view of the havoc we humans have wreaked on the planet.
The first character is Nowikcx, a tattoo artist from the future, who doesn’t give you the tattoo you want, he gives you the tattoo he thinks you need.
Character No. 2 is Vish, a woman from the past who describes the surreal experience of transforming from starving artist to art star, as commissions pile up for her unique installations, which consume ever-larger swaths of land and space.
No. 3 is Pati, a gritty, profane oil and gas prospector taking a stroll through the oilpatch of our present moment, trying to guess where to drill, a skill at which she has become quite adept.
All of it unfolds upon – and around – Gruber’s glorious set, which is a bit of a multimedia board game, utilizing a kind of layered build, mixed in with projected images and text, underneath forest-reminiscent foliage that dangles from the ceiling throughout the space.
What dominates your senses, however, in the intimate space that is the 40-seat Motel, is the physicality of Gauthier as she assumes the role of Nowikcx, who speaks with a Russian-ish accent, delivering what sounds like a cross between a scolding and an explanation of the mess we humans have made of the planet.
While you’re trying – without much success, I’m afraid – to make sense of Nowikcx, Gauthier transitions into Pati the oil prospector, now lost in the forest, speculating about how she can possibly carry on working in oil and gas, even while pregnant.
“A woman on parental leave,” she says, “is all borehole and no production.”
Pati is (comfortably) relatable and unapologetically capitalist: She pays the family’s bills, snarls at interns and prefers to visit the backcountry of the oilpatch in person when prospecting for a new gusher, rather than rely on computer data.
“My hit rate was 27.5 per cent last year,” she says.
Along comes the oil crash of 2015-17, and layoffs are sweeping across the oil and gas landscape with a brutality that is almost breathtaking – “they do the surgery before the injury happens,” is how Pati puts it.
Pati’s story about sitting in her office on Black Tuesday, waiting to see if the axe falls on her, is riveting, as breathtaking as a Bourne thriller chase scene and well executed by Gauthier, under Dundson’s robust direction.
Whenever van Belle roots his storytelling in the everyday and the specific, Easter Island hits a gusher.
When it veers into the metaphysical, from the vantage point of the future, voiced by a character who sounds like a Bond villain (from the Pierce Brosnan days), you start checking your watch.
Easter Island reaches for big themes – the inevitability of death, the human tendency to drift toward entropy – in a way that’s intellectually admirable, but also makes for a tough theatrical slog at times.
When one of the characters – I think it was Vish – looks down at the topographical map/set, in time to catch a projected image that resembles a hospital scanner, and says, “I never thought of the planet as a living thing,” it’s as if Pati had dropped her drill into some rock and struck oil.
Easter Island doesn’t find a gusher every time out, but as every prospector worth their weight in bitumen can tell you, 27.5 per cent is good data, whether you’re drilling for crude or theatrical gold.