A new play at Circa Theatre is best when it traverses the monotony of suburban life – garage doors, marital affairs and the ill-judged jokes of middle-aged white folk – but “post-colonialism”? Not so much.

An all-in-one-room affair, translated from a German play by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God is being pitched to theatre-goers as a post-colonial take on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

In this case that one room is the suburban living room of Frank and Liz, who play host to their old friends Carol and Martyn, just-returned aid workers from the developing world. [More]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

When young, prolific and award-winning German dramatist Roland Schimmelpfennig was asked by Toronto’s Volcano Theatre to contribute to their 2010 The Africa Trilogy* of plays that focus on the West’s relationship with Africa, he said (as recorded on the website), “There are things that are too big, too cruel, too complicated to be transformed into dramatic art.” He also said, “There seems to be almost no acceptable way to show the disaster of AIDS in Africa on a theatre stage. But I am sure there is one, and I have tried to find it.”

Believing theatre deals better with people than “with theory or with global economic structures” his solution was to “[give] these things a name and a human face [through] two little girls: Annie living in an unidentified African village, and Kathie, living in an unidentified Western city.” Except their presence, in Peggy Pickit Sees The Face Of God, is represented through four Western adults and their handling of the grossly cutesy plastic Peggy Pickit doll 5 year-old Kathie wants to send to Annie, and the exotic carved wooded figurine brought back from Africa as a gift for Kathie.

Having determined “this subject needs a very clear and striking transfer to a Western context,” Schimmelpfennig has chosen the stock-standard convention of the middle class dinner party then played fast and loose with it. And the “striking” element is dramatised literally – within the immaculate ‘shades-of-grey’ living room set, designed by Debbie Fish and lit by director Giles Burton.

Mixed feelings are almost palpable in the small Circa Two audience as the play proceeds on opening night. It is marketed as “A bitterly funny post-colonial Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” so an alcohol-fuelled collapse from social niceties into brutal honesty is to be expected. Indeed it opens with the host, Frank, caught like a possum in headlights, telling us, “It was a total disaster, an absolute nightmare!” So we know the effusive embrace with which his wife Liz greets her long-lost friend Carol, now back with her husband Martin after six years in Africa, is a point of departure.

Apart from the pouring of the first of many wines, the focus quickly turns to Liz and Frank’s daughter, Kathie (having a sleepover next door), the oft-mentioned but hard-to-place Annie, and the plastic doll and wooden artefact. But the flow of the evening, and the usual offer to the audience to discern the backstories and current subtext from the present action, is constantly subverted by characters taking turns to break the fourth wall, as Frank did up front, to comment direct to us, mostly on what has yet to occur, followed by a recap of the action that happened just before each interruption.

I doubt my companion and I are the only ones to find this irritating, initially. Likewise the nit-picking, moral judgements and repetitive preoccupations with the minutiae of this evening’s events, when we are hungry for more understanding of where they were and what exactly was happening in Africa, who exactly is or was Annie and what was her precise relationship with Carol and Martin.

It takes a while to realise this is the point; that their avoidance techniques reflect their inability to fully confront, let alone articulate and constructively deal with, the complexities of post-colonial Africa. And our responses to their responses reflect a syndrome we may experience every day, in relation to local, national or global politics, climate change or other existential threats to our sense of wellbeing. When political gamesmanship and media noise block our access to some ‘truth’ we believe is hidden deep-down, we fume at it and/or just want it all to go away.

But when it comes to this play, stay with it. While noting the clues in the spoken text, look beyond it. Director Giles Burton and the actors have honoured or created a lot of non-verbal communication that permeates our consciousness, infusing us with intuitive insights into the characters whose relationships and circumstances could be seen as either counterpointing or replicating, in microcosm, dysfunctional aspects of post-colonial Africa.

It becomes apparent these four friends went to medical school together and their career paths diverged when Carol and Martin, unable or unwilling to have children, heeded the urgent call to help set up a health clinic in an African village which was finally not immune to something unmentionable (violent tribal conflicts, a lethal pandemics or both). Meanwhile Liz and Frank have followed the conventional path to security with a house, car, garage and child. The couples reunite from opposite ends of the medical career path.

Gavin Rutherford’s Frank is every inch the complacent medical practitioner, fully convinced of his status yet confined to a narrow corridor of awareness and belief that gives him comfort. Rebecca Parker’s elegant Liz betrays the loss of her professional status with hyper-brightness the way she plays with the dolls. Although Frank plays along to a point, it becomes increasingly clear Liz is dealing with jealously, guilt and fear in relation to Carol and her exploits, with Annie being the means by which she hopes to connect vicariously. 

Fingal Pollock fully embodies Carol’s ambivalence at returning to civilisation and confronting her lost opportunities, while also experiencing a curdle of fear, impotence, guilt and judgement. Martin is the most circumspect of the four adults and Patrick Davies excels at compelling us to consider his thoughts and feelings as he seeks solace in yet another wine. While his direct-address moments suggest he has the best ‘bedside manner’ it’s open to interpretation as to whether he’s traumatised by his Africa experience or quietly feels the wiser for it. The questions of fidelity and integrity that hang over both Carol and Martin, and the potentially dire consequences, inevitably colour our judgement and relate to Martin’s recurring mention of a wound that refuses to heal – which can also be seen as a metaphor for post-colonial Africa.

All four actors prove very adept at stepping out to narrate then slotting straight back into the emotional state they were in before. There’s a moment when they step forward in a line to tell the story of how one itinerant backpacker initiated the surge of aid into AIDS-afflicted Africa. The idealism, activism and optimism of that moment collide with the realism, despair and impotence of now.

It’s a big dramatic risk for Frank to dig out an old Simon and Garfunkel album and play ‘The Boxer’ track in its entirety – but it serves well as background music while we reassess what has unfolded and our responses to it. There is a special feeling to be had from experiencing this together. Mind you, given the actual lyrics have no relevance to the issues at hand, it could be seen as another of Frank’s avoidance strategies.

In the calm that follows, the play’s title becomes manifest – provoking the proverbial and predicted storm. The aftermath, silently played out with a professionalism that attests to the medical skills of both women, leaves us to consider how possible it is to mend a wound that seems impossible to heal – and whether there is any humane alternative to trying. 

Peggy Pickit Sees the Face of God is not a play for the passive observer. It asks us to work with it at emotional and intellectual levels and to recognise the relevance of our responses to it, as theatre, to those we have when confronted by issues that make us feel impotent. This is the sort of experience that is unique to live theatre.  

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer