A HUGELY AMBITIOUS PLAY, Ann Lambert’s The Assumption Of Empire merges the political with the personal, the theoretical with the practical. It takes place in Montreal from 1978 to 2008, spanning the Revolution in Iran, the referendum for independence in Quebec, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the École Polytechnique massacre of fourteen women students, and the Dawson shooting. The play’s attempts to incorporate such vast and earth-shaking events as the backdrop for the life of Sophie Wiseman prove both its greatest strength and its most obvious weakness.
One of the play’s assets is Laura Mitchell. She is utterly believable as Sophie, the awe struck young freshman who has an affair with and later marries her political science professor. She grows as a mother and wife trying to reach out to a damaged adolescent daughter (Alice Abracen) who has to cope with the shootings at Dawson. Her frustration and helplessness are beautifully written and well acted, and her performance as the lover and wife of the professor is truly moving.
Bill Croft as Sophie’s present-day husband Steve is also perfect when he rushes home and carries Abracen off stage to comfort her: his love for his daughter and the need to protect this fragile child is totally convincing. He gives a nuanced performance in some very delicate, tender moments with Mitchell.
Abracen in her first professional production as Sophie’s daughter Ellie is credible as a disaffected adolescent student whose mother is more attuned to African orphans than maintaining a home. Lambert’s real life daughter, she played Ellie with a great deal of verve, and just the right amount of “I don’t give a damn.” On the other hand, Tim Hine as Ivan, the professor lover then first husband of the difficult Sophie, has a doubtful Eastern European accent and a voice that really grates. He was especially weak and painfully shrill in the emotional scenes.
The problem is that there are at least four plays here, and it was sometimes difficult to watch the leaps from one to another. The script desperately needed a dramaturge and a strong director, someone who was not married to a giant black board and the continuous, unnecessary scribbling and naming of the scene changes to inappropriate music. As well, the blocking did not conform to the configuration of the audience and it was often difficult to hear or see the action.
Lambert was the first local woman playwright ever to get produced at the Centaur Theatre. That play, Very Heaven, about three sisters who get reacquainted following the death of her mother, proved popular with Montreal audiences, women in particular.
In this play, however, Lambert covers a vast amount of history and perhaps it was just too cumbersome an idea to fit into two and half hours. Mitchell’s varied and powerful performance makes it possible to sit through the political lecturing and speechifying, some of which is just not very theatrical. It took great courage to write and mount this play. Perhaps an equally passionate dramaturge will get to work on it before it is (hopefully) re-mounted.
The Assumption of Empire, at MainLine Theatre, 3997 St. Laurent Blvd., continues through March 22. Tickets: www.mainlinetheatre.ca or 514-849-3378.
