Deco Productions presents
The World Premiere of the award-winning new Canadian play
by Jason Hall
Directed by Daniel Nyman
Designed by Kathryn Nicholson
Lighting by James Smith
Cast includes: Kate Burdette . Maria Corcobado. Carla DuBois. Diana Larsen. Alex Lanipekun . Ursula Mohan. Atesh Salih. Naomi Taylor.
1 - 26 June 2004
Playing concurrently with Europe
On the day of her son’s baptism, Mary Caldiera receives the one guest she least wants to see. Herself. Forced to revisit the past by a vision of herself at fifteen, Mary is vividly transported back to her youth. But as the events of an unimaginable tragedy begin to unfold all over again, will she be able to keep her memories repressed? Or will the Caldiera Family discover the truth about the desires and betrayalss that tore their family apart over a decade ago…
Eyes Catch Fire is a daring new drama that fragments time and shifts reality to tell the highly personal story of a family's destruction - while also exposing the larger, political implications of immigration and post-colonial life. The play spans two decades, transporting the audience from the freezing suburbs of Canada to the scorching wilderness of British Guyana.
London-based playwright Jason Hall won Canada’s prestigious Herman Voaden Playwriting Award with Eyes Catch Fire - awarded biennially to a Canadian playwright for a single outstanding work. The play has subsequently been workshopped on both sides of the Atlantic. His latest play, GBS, is currently being produced in Toronto.
"This haunting taLe of suppressed guilt and cultural tension brings a blast of warm tropical air to the Finborough Theatre. The drama’s action goes between the torpid atmosphere of British Guyana in the 60’s and the frozen regrets of a Canadian winter in the late 70’s, focusing on a young woman who has betrayed her family in a way that none of them suspect. The Canadian writer Jason Hall’s first play for theatre displays an extraordinary technical assurance, as it plays with concepts of time and character to create an involving modern tragedy. . . Maria Corcobado plays Mary at the age of 28, while a riveting Kate Burdette plays her as a truculent adolescent. Descended from a Portuguese immigrant family, Mary becomes more involved than she should when her sister Millie falls in love with a black man, Earnest. In an extraordinary, fragmented scene that perfectly sums up the fluttering preoccupations of an infatuated teenager's mind, Hall shows how Mary’s forbidden love unwittingly sows the seeds for her brother Daniel’s death. Daniel Nyman's confident production conjures up the political and personal tensions of 60’s British Guyana on the tiny Finborough stage, with a cast of eight that delivers Hall's script with passion and clarity. From a universally strong cast, Alexander Lanipekun as the charming, confused Earnest and Diana Larsen as Millie stand out...a strikingly resonant debut."
Rachel Halliburton, Time Out
"Gripping . . . Hall knows how to structure a play, making plot and character tensions carry maximum emotional impact and reveal complexities in human nature. . . It is another play about guilt, but one with an unusual story, theatrical verve and emotional truth, caught in a clutch of understanding, adroit performances. . . Ursula Mohan is outstanding . . . as the mother inclined always to blame her earnest daughter Millie. . .a fine drama that deserves to be seen far more widely."
Timothy Ramsden, Reviewsgate.com
"The story Jason Hall tells in Eyes Catch Fire at the Finborough is pretty sensational too, but it gives the author a chance to build a powerful set of mother-daughter-sister relationships (can Jason Hall really be a man?) into a tale that switches from the warmth of childhood in colonial Guyana to maturity in a chilly Toronto. . .Daniel Nyman’s carefully paced direction"
Ian Herbert, Theatre Record