«See Bob Run» and «Wild Abandon»

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries at the University of
Saskatchewan.

McIvor is an actor (Stephenville Festival, Theatre Calgary, and DNA
Theatre in Toronto) who has in fact interpreted the part of Steve in
Wild Abandon, the second one-hander published in this text. This
experience informs his advice to actors in a preface to the two pieces.
MacIvor has also been playwright-in-residence at Buddies In Bad Times
theatre and at Tarragon. Unfortunately the latter experience has not
assured an even quality for these two pieces.

Each play is written for a single performer. The style of address,
however, varies between dialogue with a series of unseen others and
exchanges with the audience as confidant and voyeur. See Bob Run follows
the frightening pathways of a young girl’s mind, totally freaked
through abuse, manipulation, and drugs. Horrific everyday experiences
keep penetrating her like a repeated rape. The text is
powerful—although most of the graphic horror is suggested to our
imaginations, not explicit—and manages a sufficient hold on a plot
line to satisfy the average audience. See Bob Run is a tour de force for
an actress and an emotional treadmill for an audience.

The technique MacIvor uses in Wild Abandon, although similar to that of
the first play, seems to lean more heavily on a sharing of the monologue
with the audience, no doubt to make it a more intimate party to the
suicide “dance” that marks the ending. Unfortunately, the
text—even as the expression of a screwed-up mind—is too disparate to
support the attempt. Apparently, having had marked success with Sea Bob
Run in 1987, the author attempted to cash in on a good thing with his
second play (written in 1988). Although in the preface he deflects the
immediate conclusion that he may be too close to the subject matter of
the second play (“It is no more autobiographical than See Bob Run”),
there is an overall clarity that is missing. Some passages are indeed
deadly accurate, their writing as evocative and emotionally chilling as
that in the first play. It is admittedly a lot to ask that this feverish
intensity be maintained, but that is precisely what is needed. As it
stands, the text of Wild Abandon—even with flashes of
brilliance—does not compare well with See Bob Run, and taken together,
seems a bit too much of a muchness.