Local theatre pulls off the Hard Sell
Colin MacLean – Edmonton Sun March 14, 2007
Two men sit in a small dark room lit only by harsh overhead lights. Their eyes have disappeared into dark, malevolent pools of threat.
The two are Pig (Mark Stubbings) and Filth (Dave Clarke), two police officers about to go into the familiar good cop/bad cop routine. Their suspect won't talk. Not surprising when you consider she's a department store dummy.
The short, brutal play is Craig Baxter's Hard Sell, a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe, now in local production from Northern Light Theatre.
Filth is loud, repulsive, menacing and skating on the edge of some sweaty psychosexual fixation. He keeps sticking his hand down his pants as if to assure himself of his own manhood. Filth has little use for his partner. Pig is a passive momma's boy Filth sees as being homosexual.
Hard Sell is yet another exploration of the macho male power dance - masculinity in crisis in a spectacle that the unfortunate, silent female can only sit and watch.
The lady is Kate, the rich widow of Sir James, who is found floating face down in his pool. He is discovered by his business associate Robert. But who did him in?
Because Kate is silent the two cops decide to work out their own idea of what went on in a re-enactment.
The story they come up with is the sale of Kate by Jamie to Robert for L70,000 in some ridiculous power game with Kate as the perfect wife, mother, whore and helpmate, in short "the commodity" - the ultimate prize.
But as the two cops play out their little game, their own distaste for each other surfaces in different, and possibly lethal ways.
There is little that is new here and one wonders why a small Fringe play from Scotland that comes with mixed reviews, should get the full season treatment from a local company - even one so edgy as Northern Light.
The acting is superlative.
Clarke's embittered loner is always fascinating to watch, and no one fills a theatre with menace as effectively, but you know everything you're going to learn about these two in the first few minutes of the show.
Director Trevor Schmidt has placed the three in a small claustrophobic room, surrounded by a scrim, which tends to shut you out rather than include you in the action.
He directs the currents and shifts of the action well and the lighting is nuanced and effective.
But despite the production's impressive staging, after awhile, the posturing of the two protagonists is as empty as the expression on the dummy's face.
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