Geometry in Venice

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

Michael Mackenzie has associations with the Stratford Festival and the
Vancouver Playhouse, as well as with Theatre Plus Toronto, which
produced Geometry in Venice in 1990. He also has a Ph.D. in French from
the University of Montreal and holds a visiting fellowship at Princeton.
His intelligence and erudition show clearly in the introduction to his
play: “In that mysterious lacuna between cities—neither romantic nor
impressionist, classical nor modern—lies the veiled and chimerical
eroticism of the paintings of John Singer Sargent. It was Sargent’s
childhood that inspired the novella The Pupil, by his friend Henry
James.”

Geometry is, in fact, a theatrical adaptation of The Pupil. It brings a
young Canadian tutor into the bosom of an exploitative European family,
and adds the perspective of the narrator, who was absent from James’s
work—a heady concoction.

The play is a verbal cornucopia and a jewel of wit. At the same time,
the author has an extremely fine sense of the theatrical devices of
letting a vein of thought end in a pause, and of punctuating a beat with
telling juxtaposition. As an example of the latter, one character says
that the young boy, Morgan, needs a tutor because he cannot attend one
of the better schools in England: “Mrs. Moreen: ‘[ . . . ] Mr.
Pemberton, he cannot play as other children do.’ Pemberton: (pause)
‘I’m sorry . . . ?’ Mrs. Moreen: ‘His heart.’ Morgan
[entering]: ‘I couldn’t find it.’” The play details these
characters’ attempts to deal with intimacy in disastrous
circumstances.

For anyone who loves words, the text of Geometry in Venice is a delight
to read . . . over and over. I am sure a good production would be
equally satisfying.