The Pessimist.

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

The Pessimist is a companion piece to Morwyn Brebner’s The Optimists, a 2006 nominee for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama.

Although the cover blurb from Now Magazine declares it to be “A house full of comic possibilities … clever writing” the accent must surely be on the possibilities and not the actual realization, for the play is—in one of its own chosen words—inchoate. In one clever exchange a character responds to the question “Do you like my wife?” with the response, “Is that a trick question?” The riposte might equally apply to this underwritten draft of a script. Out of blackouts come a series of semi-domestic scenes which bit by bit form an uncertain paste-up of characters and plot … all with possibilities, but never quite focused nor given sufficient time for development into a forward arc. Improvising a play to be staged in the garbage dump of a small Ontario town is an intriguing premise. Consider for instance a not unexpected series of confrontations between townspeople (zombies, some of whom may be mute) and the artsy group consisting of a dying theatre director, his retired actress-wife (“actors are like priests, they can quit but they’re still not normal”), a playwright, an actress-in-the-making (described by one character as “my kinderwhore adulteress in your ripped dress”), and a tyro rural politician (politicians are only theatrical on the inside, he claims). The play eventually settles down to a theme of preparing for death, but it takes an obfuscating, circuitous route. Actors might just be able to wade through the series of frustratingly short television-style scenes to make these characters interesting enough to hold an audience, but it would be a challenge and require extended rehearsal time.