School assignment: In the Chamber 2010: Last Men

Last night, I went to see Theatre Projects Manitoba’s In the Chamber 2010: Last Men and aside from one redeeming quality of the play, I disliked the experience so much, it is doubtful that I’d ever go back.

To begin, I will admit that I was running on only about 5 hours of sleep and after a 12 hour day, I was not particularly up to going to a play for school. That being said, I still did not get much from the two performances.

In the Chamber 2010 is a play consisting of two 50 minute sets. Both are directed by Sarah Constible and the first was performed and written by Gordon Tanner and the second by Stephen Ratzlaff. The first set, Last Man in Krakendorf, consisted of Tanner expressing his disdain at a video camera he was to send to Warren Buffet. In this set, he spent 50 minutes describing his anguish over the horrible mistreatment of animals, in particular hogs. The second set, Last Man in Puntarenas, consisted of Ratzlaff at his retirement dinner giving a speech in which he discusses the misery that is his life, including the death of his son and the divorce from his wife.

The one redeeming quality of the play was its acting. Both actors were superb. Passionate and emotional, I could feel their struggles as I watched them display agony at their lives. I have always had an appreciation for theatre. Having worked in the film industry and having been on numerous movie sets, I sincerely feel there is much more pressure on theatre actors. Their timing must be completely right, their lines memorized, and their acting must be perfect on the first take, otherwise the moment will have passed them. These two men were superb at their craft. Although both were clearly character actors, I did enjoy watching their passion, listening to their voices, and watching their faces change as their emotions did.

Unfortunately, the acting was the only thing I enjoyed about the play. I found the content to not only be a bit boring, but even more poorly executed in terms of the writing. I understand that the actors wrote the plays themselves. Actually, Ratzlaff was one of my high school substitutes and he mentioned Balmoral Hall School Girls in his monologue.....which made me wonder, if he wrote this, and that part is true, is this entire piece true?

Other than that, the content was presented in such a fast fashion, with terminology that was difficult to follow. As a result, I felt lost within the first ten minutes of the first set, and although I did catch up and understand the overall message of set 1, I never did enjoy the experience. Set 2 was better for me in terms of content. I felt bad for Ratzlaff as he described the death of his son and how it lead to his entire life collapsing, but, again, the set went on far too long, seemed to drag, and was redundant in content.

The mood in the room was one of acceptance. The audience laughed at the jokes, although I did not find them that clever. Overall though, I would only recommend this play to people who know the actors, or are super interested in the content of the play because otherwise, the entertainment value was close to invisible. There was not much in the play to keep my attention, get me excited, fuel my passion, or evoke my emotions.

As a result, I would not return to watch the play again.
That being said, if you are interested, tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for seniors at 8:00 p.m. tonight at the Rachel Browne Theatre (211Bannatyne at Main Street).