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Review: Age-old tale retold with verve

What: The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs Where: Langham Court Theatre When: To Dec. 6 Rating: Three out of five Most of us know the age-old fable of Bluebeard, who commands his wife not to open the door of a particular room while he’s away.
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The cast of The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs take on a challenging play, which will please thoughtful theatregoers.

What: The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs

Where: Langham Court Theatre

When: To Dec. 6

Rating: Three out of five

Most of us know the age-old fable of Bluebeard, who commands his wife not to open the door of a particular room while he’s away.

Curiosity getting the better of her, the wife takes a gander, only to discover the corpses of hubby’s former wives in a state of gruesome dishabille.

The story, as macabre as the grimmest Grimm’s fairy tale, is reinvented as a contemporary fantasy in Carole Fréchette’s The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs. Langham Court Theatre has just opened John Murrell’s English translation of the Montreal playwright’s spooky, peculiar and oddly affecting drama.

This 85-minute (no intermission) production, briskly directed by Naomi Simpson, is a mixed success. The Small Room is a particularly challenging script for any company, let alone community actors. Still, thoughtful theatre-goers will take pleasure in Fréchette’s poetic play, which — in a surprisingly visceral way — delves deeply into the dark heart of the human condition.

Julie Forrest plays Grace, a beautiful young woman who has just married Henry (Justin Carter), the wealthy owner of a 28-room mansion. A few cracks immediately surface beneath the veneer of perfection. A jealous sister (Michelle Morris) points out the couple knew one another just 52 days before the proposal. Henry has been married three times before. And, it turns out, despite appearing happy, Grace spent her childhood weeping every night.

When Henry departs for a business trip, Grace wastes little time in checking out the small room at the top of the stairs against her husband’s wishes. Her jaw-dropping discovery can’t be revealed without ruining a surprise. It is sufficient to say Grace gets in touch with something powerful — even bestial — within herself. Forrest, who on Thursday night seemed at times rather stiff, captured these encounters convincingly. This is the core of Fréchette’s play, which presents an age-old dilemma: How do we reconcile society’s moral agenda against our most primal desires?

The dramatist has modernized the Bluebeard story with great skill, tapping into a modern-day sensibility without sacrificing the elemental horror of the original yarn.

No longer a monster, Henry at times seems disconcertingly ordinary and the typical controlling husband. He laments that his trophy wife won’t live contentedly in the jewel-box he has created (these were some of Carter’s better moments). We even feel sympathy for him.

The Small Room is stylized in a poetic way not uncommon in French-Canadian theatre. Certain phrases are repeated, events shift back and forth in time, and characters occasionally express themselves in the third person. The play has a powerfully dream-like, almost narcotized quality, as though being experienced through an opium haze. At the same time, it’s rooted in naturalism.

Balancing all these elements is a difficult proposition. Perhaps the most convincing character in this production is the mother, Joyce, played by Wendy Magahay, a skilled actor. Equally impressive is Leanne Allen, who plays an oddball maid in a highly stylized manner with great success.

To my eye, the visual elements of The Small Room are uneven. Julian Cervello’s two-level set of the mansion looks awkward, particularly a cubby-hole bedroom (doubling as a bath) placed centre-stage. The mysterious room — and the stairs to it — have little mystery. The use of video clips is a good idea; however, here it seems not fully realized.

Overall, this is an interesting piece and a commendably bold choice for Langham Court Theatre. In some ways The Small Room’s air of mystery and repressed sexuality suggests a modern-day Henry James. Certainly this is a rare chance in Victoria to witness a work by Fréchette, an acclaimed playwright who this week won a Governor General’s literary award.

achamberlain@timescolonist.com