Other People

What would RENT have been without the music and operatic levels of melodrama? Oh, and strip away the AIDS epidemic, and sort-of-villainous landlord, too. We’re talking real Lower East Side artists, with their own, more commonplace and insidious problems and insecurities. If this sounds glib, that may well be, but playwright Christopher Shinn’s play Other People isn’t. Rather, Other People comes across as a sincere attempt to paint a realistic portrayal of lonely, struggling artist-writers in the world’s largest metropolis. 

Mutual Friends Co-Op, a mix of Toronto-based actors and producers, are giving Other People its Canadian première with a short run (it closes January 28th) at the Young Centre’s Tank House Theatre. Three young writers are spending a late 90’s Christmas and New Year’s in Manhattan (“There’s nothing fucking worse,” moans one supporting character): Stephen (Ben Lewis), a playwright, actor, and “blurb” film reviewer; Mark (Indrit Kasapi), a screenwriter and ex of Stephen’s who’s recently returned to New York after a year off the grid, getting “clean” after a drug addiction; and Petra (Tatiana Maslany), a poet and creative writer who’s also recently returned to the city after spending time stripping in Japan. Stephen’s anxiously watching the mail for news of a possible grant to write a play, while Mark’s expecting an advance screener of the movie he wrote, the sale of which led to his downward spiral. Petra’s waiting for something, too, though that may just be inspiration.  

Director Aaron Willis has kept all the period appropriate references to VCRs, Quentin Tarantino’s breakout films, and the release of the Tommy Lee & Pamela Anderson sex tape intact. He and sound designer Lindsay Taft have also done a plum job of giving the piece an authentic late ’90s soundtrack—Radiohead, Green Day, etc.—that thankfully never overwhelms the actor’s dialogue. RENT really is discussed, in a withering appraisal by Petra, who’s developed a tenuous friendship with a lonely patron (Mike McPhaden, in a nicely nuanced turn) at the strip club where she’s secretly taken up dancing again. Loneliness is a disease that creeps up on all the characters in Shinn’s play, though it’s more obvious with some; Stephen’s, for instance, is outright and desperate, and exaggerated by Mark’s repression and new lifestyle choices (which drive Lewis’ still-pining character to distraction).

Many of the actors, including Lewis (Degrassi, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World) and McPhaden (The Border, Murdoch Mysteries), are more familiar to television and film viewers than Toronto theatre audiences. This is especially true of Maslany, a Gemini (Flashpoint) and Sundance festival (Grown Up Movie Star) award-winner, who’s done very little stage work in Toronto. Kasapi does a commendable job of internalizing Mark’s slow unravelling, and Brendan McMurtry-Howlett’s cagey but exuberant street hustler Tan makes an impact, as well. But it’s Maslany who’s the standout here. Petra’s the character Shinn has given the most to work with. She has the brittle vulnerability we’ve seen in tough and sexually confident characters before, but Maslany also imbues her with a tenderness towards the suffering men in her lives, and a real eloquence when McPhaden’s patron slowly draws her out of her shell. In monologues about the reality of trying to be a working artist, and a criticism of pop culture fare, she’s by far the playwright’s most effective mouthpiece. And when her own claims to be happy in her pursuits of artistic truth and beauty are exposed as somewhat hypocritical, that’s all out there for us to see, too.

The “other people” of the play are who she and her fellow NYC denizens are trying to reach out and connect to, both personally and professionally, and their failures to do so—and their small successes—are tantalizing mirror glimpses of ourselves, whether we’re involved in artistic pursuits or not. 

Grade: B+