A LIE OF THE MIND

At Little Mountain Studio until Dec. 4

Tickets: 604.992.2313

mainstreettheatre.ca

A Lie of the Mind is disturbingly, provocatively, classic Sam Shepard: lower/middle class America, dysfunctional families, sibling rivalry and dirty secrets that sprawl across the American West. Jake (Josh Drebit) even wraps himself in the Stars and Stripes when he heads out to find Beth (Lara Gilchrist)), the wife he thinks he has finally beaten to death. Beth's brother Mike (Daryl King) uses/abuses that same flag by leashing Jake with it and making him crawl on all fours, piggy-style. And finally, Old Glory is ceremoniously folded by Beth's father (Patrick Keating) with the help of her mother (Kathleen Duborg) in a way that implies they believe all's well with America.

This is familiar Shepard landscape delivered with withering dark humour that leaves you shaking your head. It's an actor's playground where each character is so meticulously crafted with psychological quirks--or downright psychoses--that once the actor has grasped the character, he or she can just let it rip. And rip they do.

If you've ever wondered just how much love can hurt, A Lie of the Mind is here to tell you. Jake is so certain Beth is getting it on with another man, that he tries to beat the truth out of her. Fortunately, we don't see the beating but meet Jake confessing later to his brother Frankie (Ryan Beil) that he has killed her. Beth has actually survived but is brain damaged and is being looked after by her family. Unaware, Jake collapses, goes into a deep depression and is cared for by his mother (Barbara Pollard) and sister Sally (Rebecca Auerbach).

But these are not families where healing can happen. Jake's mother has an incestuous passion for her son. Pollard (famous for her role in various Mom's The Word shows) is outrageous in this role: abrasive, mouthy and in complete denial about her character's little boy. Auerbach simmers with rage over Jake's can-do-no-wrong relationship with their mother.

Beth's family is equally screwy: her mother has been so beaten down by Beth's father, she's almost not there. Duborg, her haired yanked back in bobby pins, looks vacant, broken and asks, when things get out of hand, "Don't scream in the house. It's very old."

Keating, as the father, scores a career best. Small and sitting in an upholstered chair, he nevertheless is the man of the house, browbeating his wife and son. He is so demanding, all you can do is groan with laughter. King begins as Beth's protective brother Mike but ends up being downright scary.

Gilchrist and Drebit are the lovers that show us how destructive love can be. It's Othello meets the Hatfields and the McCoys in a package that smacks of Deliverance. Gilchrist amazes us with the fractured language that is all Beth's brain injury allows. But the damage is deeper, more profound than speech, and Gilchrist takes us there, too. Ironically, denied conversational skill, Beth sees some things more clearly. She's like a child--but sexually charged. Bad combination.

Beil is the character that seems most normal, but his character gets dragged into the mess and Beil, with his usual, low key performance, provides some very funny moments.

Drebit does a lot of heavy lifting in the role of Jake. He succeeds in getting us to loathe the violence in Jake, but he also manages to earn--to some small degree--our sympathy for a man so needy and so in love that he cries, "I love you more than life." He's a boy in a man's body.

Under Stephen Malloy's fine direction for Main Street Theatre Equity Co-op, Shepard does what he always does: distances us from his characters until we end up seeing, in small bits and pieces, ourselves in all of them--a neat, Sam Shepard trick.

joled@telus.net