Venue: Vancouver Playhouse
Date(s): 8 October - 3 November, 2001
Reviewer: Jane Penistan
Here we are back in the 60's. A sleazy hotel room, turquoise walls, shocking pink trim, miniskirts and matching pumps, dead-end office jobs
and the expectation of marriage-and-happy-ever-after.
As Marian McAlpin, Jillian Fargey is a somewhat bewildered interviewer
for an advertising firm. Getting engaged to embryo lawyer Peter
Wollander (Todd Talbot) should stabilize her life, but instead, it adds
complications to an already unsettled situation. Tara Samuel convincingly plays Ainsley Tewce her happy-go-lucky, try-anything-new apartment sharer whose seduction of the experienced Don Juan, Len Slank (Alec McClure}, is amusing and clever. As the self-centered post
graduate student, Haig Sutherland is convincing as Duncan. Ellen-Ray Hennessy succeeds in transforming herself from the no-longer young office manager, to the apartment building's fussy landlady and into Duncan's paternalistic roommate, with considerable aplomb, and as speedily as the sets change in this often fragmentary short-scene play.
As in Atwood's novel, The Edible Woman is a snide look at life
in Toronto in the 1960's. Marian expiates herself from the consuming
male domination symbolically by stuffing the men concerned with a cake
in the shape of a woman. But is she really free and is this a
happy-ever-after fairy tale?
© 2001, Jane Penistan
The Edible Woman runs at the Vancouver Playhouse from October 8 - November 3, 2001.
Performances are Monday through Saturday at 8.00 p.m. with matinees on
Saturdays and selected Wednesdays at 2.00 p.m. B.C.TV matinee Pay What You Can takes place on October 13 at 2.00 p.m.
The next Playhouse Singles Night is Friday November 2, 2001.
Adult tickets range from $33.00 - $44.00, Seniors from $29.00 - $37.00,
Students $19.00 - $23.00. Rush tickets ($19.00) are available one hour
before the performance, subject to availability. Group rates are available.
To reserve tickets call either the Playhouse Customer Service Office, at 604-873-3311 or Ticketmaster at 604-280-3311
Help Fill the Food Bank's shelves! During the run of The Edible Woman please drop off non-perishable food items in the designated box in the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre lobby. Thank you for helping fight hunger within our community.