When writing about a play that's about the making of a play, I figure it must be all right to write about writing about it. In the case of The Book of Judith, which plays till the end of May in a tent on the lawn of the Centre for Mental Health and Addiction on Toronto's Queen West, that also might be the appropriate approach. Being self-reflexive also gives me the chance to violate a couple of other rules I try to maintain: not writing about what's not on stage but could have been (under normal circumstances: what's the point of coulda, shoulda, woulda?) and not pulling apart the production's intentions from its execution.
Let's start at the beginning. I met the show's creator Michael Rubenfeld for an interview for Eye Weekly and found him totally likable and smart. My first questions, as they often are, were about how the show came to be and he had a compelling narrative. As we talked, I realized that this creation narrative--how he met the play's subject, Judith Snow, a quadriplegic who is an international advocate for the inclusion of disabled people, how they started working on a play, how it fell apart and how he pulled it back together again--was the spine of the play. Interesting enough. It got me wondering what the play itself was going to say about the experience. If the play was about his journey from seeing Snow as little more than a freak to seeing her as a person whose very existence in the world challenged our views of it, I was curious what it was about Snow that triggered this awareness and what it was about Rubenfeld that was different now.
The resulting play is difficult to write about without sounding like an asshole. I think there was a lot of talent on the stage, including the choir. I think we need more art--more dialogue in general--on concepts around disability and inclusion. I think Judith Snow is a worthy subject of hagiography. I think the play's heart is in the right place. I think the play will make people think more about disability and, because Rubenfeld is more connected to Toronto's artsy scene than its disability community, it will touch a lot of people who may not have otherwise thought about disability.
But I was surprised how wafer-thin the play's thinking was. Rubenfeld introduces Snow as an "oddity and an inspiration," someone defined by her disability, her physical dependence on other people to help her get through her life, and then talks about how, through the process of creating the play, he discovered how she is so much more than that. But he doesn't give that "much more" to us. The play, for all its whole-person thinking, still focuses on Snow's disability. We don't get a sense of her as a person or a sense of her intriguing views of the world except in the quotes from her contained in the beautifully designed missal. I would have liked to have had much more Snow--what are her hobbies? if she wants to get laid, what kind of a man is she interested in?--and much more of how specifically she changed Rubenfeld. But the show only skims the surface. Rubenfeld performs the piece in evangelical revival-tent style and it's almost as if this approach prevents him from digging down: What was Snow before this project? What was he? What are they after? We're told over and over again how she changed him, but, aside from the fact that he's doing the show itself, he doesn't really show us. The audience is kept on the outside and, for a show about inclusion, I think that's a shame. It's like the process of the play and his emotional journey through that process--the government funding, his girlfriend breaking up with him partway through--overwhelmed the play's original mission: to show what Judith Snow, in particular, brings to the world.
So that's what I thought the show should have been: more Snow, less belly-button gazing. But I also think that, despite my qualms, the show is an important one to do, about a theme that deserves more attention.
Was what's there interesting enough? Mostly. The music by Andrew Penner was great and fun. Rubenfeld is a compelling performer but the preacher-style felt one-note. The audience participation was a nice touch, as was the surprise almost-ending. As for the ending itself: There wasn't one. The Book of Judith is a worthy production offers breezy entertainment and feel-good sentiment. But if you want to have a sense of the emotional journey of Snow and Rubenfeld, you might have to produce a play yourself.
Oh come on buddy. Lighten up!
ReplyDeleteAt least he liked the Missal.
ReplyDelete