Patience

James Noonan is an adjunct professor of English at Carleton University
and the author of Biography and Autobiography: Essays on Irish and
Canadian History and Literature.

For the past 10 years, Jason Sherman has been one of the most prominent
and successful voices in the Canadian theatre. Patience goes beyond the
scope of many of his plays in being a search for meaning in the life of
one man who typifies many men and women at the end of the 20th century.
First produced at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, it has also had
productions in London (Ontario), Victoria, Vancouver, and Ottawa. The
title of the play suggests the book of Job, and in many ways the central
character in the play, Reuben Field, is a Job-like figure. He begins as
a prosperous and robust individual with a good job, a wife and children,
close family ties, and many friends. In the course of the play, he loses
most of them.

But unlike Job, Reuben is not a good man; he is a liar, a cheat, an
embezzler, an adulterer—in short, a very selfish man. Unlike Job, he
learns little from his misfortunes by the end of the play, and is not
restored to the prosperity he once had. He asks why evil things should
happen to him, but cannot find an answer. The closest the play comes to
an answer is provided by a rabbi who asks Reuben: “Did you imagine the
beauty of the selfless act, or did you only give in expectation of
return?”

It is Jason Sherman’s gift to show us Reuben’s plight in all its
unpleasant reality. He does this with witty and often painfully accurate
dialogue, at times making us both laugh at and lament the
shortsightedness and selfishness of Reuben. If Sherman sometimes pushes
the humor too far—as when he has the rabbi talking on a cell phone to
Yahweh, who continually puts him on hold—this only makes us appreciate
more Sherman’s comedic talent at its best.

If Reuben’s world is not righted as Job’s was, it has a tragicomic
reality that modern men and women can relate to as more genuinely their
own.