Critique On the Play Performance of “The Carpenter” in Montreal
When doing a play about family ties there has to be some continuity and care should be taken to make sure additional tales of a former life does not compromise the central theme of memory loss and family neglect. The main theme has to show depth and one wants to see the subplot supporting the main story instead of just getting incidental information on how the family members are discontent. It is also very hard to do a play about Alzheimer's or any other disease that devastates a family, without showing how the trauma actually affects his loved ones and how they realistically react.
If the play is going to show flash backs then there should be moments where the main character sees himself as having lost his coherence years earlier.
The carpenter made a brave attempt at exposing some of the effects it has on the chemistry of the family but failed by being too shallow in its approach. Experienced actors such as myself were looking for some contradictory behavior, especially from the main character, Silvio as he wrestles with his memory loss and hallucinations. It was not asking too much to see an additional scene of how he would visit a hospital ward with advanced cases and be shocked by them or refuse to stay. Instead the transition from home to hospital life is too clean for him. The public never sees him rebel over the issue.
The play presents how initially the father's condition was confused with alcoholism, because of his rants and outbursts of anger. But the repetition of the fact was unnecessary. In acting often a frustrated gesture of rudely picking up a half empty bottle would be a clue to the audience that the son was dissatisfied with his dad's habit. Instead Luciano would just reiterate what was already found out about his father's drinking.
In addition some of the action appeared contrived and static. The same tonality of the son with regards to his relationship to his father showed little depth of character. The father showed little contradictory behavior especially to his children and only once do we see how he reacts to the divorce of the eldest child. Knowledge of the daughter being divorced could have been entirely omitted in the first scene. It did not add to the tragic finding of the father's loss of self-control.
What about explaining why the middle child was always the one who obeyed her parents instead of repeating the line that she always listens? That too did nothing to explain how the child tried to carve her own identity from what was imposed. In short the public gets a lot of incidental information of the family, which stretches the length of the play and takes away from the time Silvio could use to examine the loss of his faculties or how his children would believably discuss that loss.
The mother's largest monologue as she refused to commit her husband to a long-term care facility could have been shortened, much of what she said was repeated and then her voice being raised to show anger was unrealistic. The doctor's constant cheeriness was unrealistic. Many doctors visibly show the stress of coping with memory loss patients.
In short the play needs to be reworked and irrelevant slices of the family life should be cut out entirely. The actors need to be more realistic especially in moment where they have to express the loss of their father. Acting is not repeating lines nor is it a means of putting every action to words. The text should then be modified so that the public could have the opportunity of coming to conclusions for themselves.
One got the impression that the playwright condensed several stories into one play and did a disservice to otherwise applicable information that could have been developed separately such as the influence of Silvio's father in Chicago. If the father was a mob figure and his son wanted a crime free life in the new country that would have been far more relevant than having to know several occasions when the older daughter was in debt and depended on her younger sister.
The public would have liked to see more on how the father gradually showed less consideration to his wife and how she would be contradictory to his behavior instead of always defending him.
