In a well-coordinated attempt to show the problems of bureaucracy in modern times, one secretary broke free. Nora Cigljarev, who played the receptionist that could not be broken, was the Hail Mary this play needed to win the night.
The Memo, a play written by Vaclav Havel and translated by Paul Wilson, was brought to life in the George Luscombe Theatre. This play was a production of the University of Guelph’s School of English and Theatre Studies students in technical and acting courses. For the actors, it is a class you must audition for to be enrolled.
“Havel was writing about, of course, a bureaucratic communist state in the 1960s, but his observations about how institutions and bureaucracies work seemed to really kind of transfer in our own environment,” said director and professor, Alan Filewod.
In this play, a fake language called Ptydepe appears in a company director’s memo. Adam Newton, who plays company director Gross, must find out what this memo says. All the while manipulative, anarchistic forces have been manufacturing an environment where Ptydepe is the formal main language communicated in the office. Cyclical systems arise, and characters must learn how to adapt in a setting of constant pointless change.
“It’s structured like a farce, […] and yet it is not over the top the slap stick,” said Filewod. “The symmetry of the play, which is so clear, the kind of four sequences of three scenes, and patterns and speeches reprised in different ways kind of goes to his conception of an ideological institution as being [a] functionally dehumanizing machine.”
The Memo quickly brings forward memories of the classic Abbot and Costello act Who’s on First? It is this type of absurdity that is akin to the nature of the comedy, which was supposed to be in the opening performance of The Memo. Ultimately, this play should have darker comedic tones than expressed in this 1930’s bit, but instead of a brooding, absurd comedy, the audience was presented with a dizzying office sitcom. While the characters within the play were, in a way, supposed to represent automatons of an inherently damaged bureaucratic system, the emotional story of each player failed to rise and fall with the flow of the play.
Duncan Gibson-Lockhart, who played a steely, body guard-esque character, managed to develop his in-scene persona, even though he spoke no more than two sentences throughout the entire play—an area that was not equally weighted for the actors in this production. If getting several monologues worth of lines isn’t hard enough, perfecting long scenes in a convincing, made up language is a huge challenge for any player.
Whether Cigljarev’s character was picking up a kettle, fetching her sassy boss lemons, or delivering the closing speech, it didn’t look or feel like she was acting. Seamlessly, she expressed her character in a real way that fit into the confines of the play.
“I think I focused in on just, emotion and whatever Alice was feeling, because again she does everything for everyone and she’s sort of the underdog,” said Cigljarev. “Just channeling that emotion that she goes through throughout the entire play really.”
The set was a stunning off-white, with black accents and 1960s pieces within. There were also bold and seamlessly integrated technical elements including a multi-screen classic projector type set up that was incorporated into several scenes of the play. A shadow wall that gave the illusion of a full-size dancehall in the background proved very effective in showing what happened just beyond the set. This piece of perfection was another creation of professor and designer Pat Flood and company.
Another technical wonder of this play was the exquisite blocking and stage management. With five doors on set, stage manager Amber Sherwood-Robinson did an excellent job of keeping everyone in step as the show progressed. The harmonious scene changes happened with coordinated footsteps to music while a visual timer ran in the background. This elaborate style of switch-up leaves no room for error, and was executed without flaw.
The Memo will be on stage at 8 p.m. in the George Luscombe theatre Nov. 16–21 2015.