Small Parts

Solo Collective Theatre’s “Small Parts,” which just closed at Performance Works, has attracted a number of comments.  Almost all have centred on the back story to the creation of the play.  The playwright’s mother, diagnosed with terminal cancer, writes (for reasons never made clear) a very bad play, its various characters being body parts.  The playwright lends his professional theatre skills to bringing “The Ovarian Dialogues” to life on stage.

Small Parts attempts to replicate the real-life events as a separate theatrical experience.  As touching as the back story may be, sad to say as a stand-alone play it simply does not work.

It is ironic that the seeds of what might make it work are already in the play but the playwright failed to let them germinate and take root.  I refer to Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” as a template for the play.  The opening is promising by utilizing the opening scene with the storm.  But then the idea is dropped.  After that we see only passing references that invoke Shakespeare – a character named Ariel who is ultimately “freed” and the phrase “brave new world.”

Much more could have been done to map Small Parts on to The Tempest starting with the characters, their names and their relationships.  One character in particular illustrates the possibilities – Andrew McNee playing “Dan” is already there as a Caliban figure.  Just call him “Cal”.  Let Prospero, Ferdinand, and Miranda become Proserpine, Fred and Mandy mapped on to Irene (the mother), Nathan (the playwright) and Nory (a performer).

Defining new relationships between the characters and making them work would be a challenge and require a major departure from the back story – with no guarantee of success – but the result would have the potential to be a much stronger and engaging work.