A Teatro Trilogy: Selected Plays

Tamara Jones is a former production operations supervisor in the
Entertainment Department of Paramount Canada’s Wonderland.

The three plays in this collection, all produced by Teatro La
Quindicina, deal with the theme of delusion—that which is healthy and
that which is not. In “Shockers Delight,” Julia and Marcus have
known each other since childhood. Now in college, in 1956, they relate
to each other by means of a flurry of wisecracks, witty repartee, and
sexually charged banter. By masking his true feelings, Marcus ensures
his own destruction.

In the deceptively simple “Pith,” a play set in 1931, adventurer
Jack Vail creates much-needed upheaval in the life of a widow named Mrs.
Tilford. Vail recognizes the faint hope she “carries in her heart”
for her missing husband, but intends to “extinguish it. Snuff it
out.” The imaginary journey that Vail creates for her is what
inevitably will resolve the psychological block in her life concerning
her husband’s whereabouts. Mrs. Tilford now has her own resolution to
the question that has left her no peace for years.

Drop a Canadian playwright into present-day Los Angeles and you end up
with the setting of “Margin of the Sky.” As Leo struggles to begin
the screenplay that his brother-in-law Spence hopes will launch their
careers, he decides to leave the confines of his office. After we watch
his day play out, we discover that his encounters have not, in reality,
taken place. However, this “idealized” version of his day brings Leo
to a more profound realization.

As Lemoine puts it, what unites these plays is the point of
transcendence “where the characters comes to realize the difference
between what is real and what isn’t and gain a kind of enduring
strength from it.” A Teatro Trilogy is an engaging selection of work.
The plays’ sophisticated dialogue and elaborate use of setting and
music creates what has been called the Canadian comedy of manners.