Are creative artists merely highfalutin con men and women? In his edgy show True Crime — now at the Belfry Theatre’s Spark Festival — actor-playwright-musician Torquil Campbell makes the case for this provocative notion.
Hipsters know Campbell as a singer with Stars, a Montreal indie pop band of some renown. Yet he started out as an actor. Indeed, his father was Douglas Campbell, a celebrated Stratford Festival actor (in the show Campbell notes his dad’s photograph hangs in Sardi’s in New York).
True Crime, Campbell tells us, marks his official return to theatre after a 17-year absence. Written with Chris Abraham, with Julian Brown playing guitar on stage, it’s a 90-minute meta-theatre work that intermingles elements of Campbell’s autobiography with the true tale of Christian Gerhartsreiter, a notorious con man and convicted murder.
Gerhartsreiter’s speciality was assuming fake identities. His most outrageous was “Clark Rockefeller,” ostensibly a member of the famed Rockefeller family. In this guise, Gerhartsreiter married a well-off woman and had a daughter with her. When she started to get wise (his wife noticed he never visited the other Rockefellers) the couple divorced. Gerhartsreiter ran afoul of the law when he later kidnapped his estranged daughter. He was ultimately convicted of the murder of a man in 1985, and is serving time in a California penitentiary.
Campbell says he became fascinated with Gerhartsreiter, partly because he loves true crime stories and partly because the pair share similarities. They look a bit alike — in the show, Campbell is short-haired with horn-rimmed Elvis Costello glasses. They both enjoy the novels of Patricia Highsmith (she wrote The Talented Mr. Ripley, about a con man who assumes the identity of a rich friend). And each is an attention seeker.
Armed with an Ontario Arts Council grant, Campbell set out to write a play about Gerhartsreiter. He did research. He visited the con man’s former haunts and chatted to people who once knew Gerhartsreiter. He even wrote to Gerhartsreiter and persuaded him to agree to a series of interviews in prison. Or so he says.
A talented mimic, Campbell begins his play in the role of Gerhartsreiter. He’s a witty, campy character who, on Thursday night, mingled with and teased the audience. We immediately like this sophisticate who seems an amusing David Sedaris-like fellow.
This sense of bubbly charm and fun soon wears off. Campbell’s interest in Gerhartsreiter becomes an obsession. His wife frets that her hubby’s project has transmogrified into a sickness. And while Gerhartsreiter seemed a likeable chap at first, subsequent meetings reveal him as twisted and manipulative.
The script is complex, perhaps trying to achieve too much. At one point, Campbell exhorts us to hang in there as the plot becomes increasingly byzantine. That said, True Crime is intelligent and provocative, with moments of real brilliance.
Campbell is a charismatic performer easily able to hold an audience. He takes care that we never get too complacent or comfortably entertained. At one point, he sings a disturbing song — complete with yelping barks — that’s inspired by Gerhartsreiter’s murder of his two pet dogs. Campbell’s level of intensity, here and elsewhere, slices like a razor; these were raw, thrilling moments of theatre.
I’m not sure I buy Campbell’s notion that the artist and the con man are birds of a feather. Gerhartsreiter’s motives are just too dark and evil to make the case. Much more persuasive is the actor-playwright’s other theme, that we must think harder about what’s truth and fiction in art. The show’s ending seems a touch contrived yet, overall, this is compelling theatre. The final performance of True Crime is tonight at 8.
The University of Victoria’s Phoenix Theatre yanks Shakespeare into the 21st century with a new pop-musical production of The Comedy of Errors, opening Thursday and continuing to March 24.
Under Jeffrey Renn’s direction, the romp about two sets of twins features dancing and music by Nina Simone, Beyoncé, Queen and Justin Timberlake.
Dance Victoria invites us to don 3-D glasses to experience Wayne McGregor’s Atomos at the Royal Theatre. The glasses enable dance fans to appreciate seven 52-inch three-dimensional video screens, which will descend during the show.
McGregor is an award-winning British choreographer who was movement director for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Atomos plays the Royal March 16 and 17. There are free pre-show chats in the lobby at 6:45 p.m. before each of the performances, which start at 7:30 p.m.
