A scene from Das Ding (The Thing).James Heaslip
The play's Das Ding – and the thing in question is a cotton fibre.
German playwright Philipp Lohle's 2012 comedy dramatizes the epic journey of the thing from a cotton farm to a soccer jersey and then back again.
In a trip that crisscrosses the globe, the thing encounters an African farmer named Siwa (Naomi Wright), a Québécois aid work named Guy (a very droll Qasim Khan), Chinese soy/clothes/sanitation entrepreneurs named Li and Wang (Khan again and Kristopher Bowman), and, most dramatically, a couple of Canadian newlyweds named Katherine (Lisa Karen Cox) and Thomas (Bowman once more) who run a recycling company in Toronto.
In the form of the jersey, the thing also encounters love – from Katherine's brother Patrick (Philip Nozuka), who adores playing soccer. After his career is ended early by an injury, however, the young man goes on a parallel around-the-world journey sparked by accidentally snapping a photo that goes viral.
Interviewers in Japan and Sweden and the United States all ask Patrick how he came to take such a magical photo – but don't understand that, actually, these days, a thing that touches people all around the world is as common and banal as a cotton fibre.
Lohle, amidst his LOLs, is saying that our brains still can't wrap our minds around the realities of globalization and our interconnectedness.
Das Ding has a multinarrative structure as with The Red Violin or Magnolia – but is written as if those stories were told from the perspective of the violin or the frogs that fall from the sky in those films.
So, how do you stage a play in which the main character is a cotton fibre? Director Ashlie Corcoran pulls it off with all the creativity and cheerfulness of an OK Go video.
Set designer Drew Facey has built a floor-to-ceiling cotton ball made out of T-shirts seemingly velcroed to a wooden frame. It shape-shifts throughout the play, like the thing itself. It begins as a throne for King Manuel I of Portugal in a prologue set in the days of Magellan, when going around the world was still only a dream; and ends up as a Toronto bedroom where Katherine and Li connect via webcam. (Or do they disconnect?)
The five cast members who play the human characters also all play the part of the thing at different times by flipping little white hoods up over their heads – their interpretations of the inanimate object ranging from adorable (Nozuka) to creepy (Wright).
All in all, Das Ding is a fun play to watch. But Lohle's script – here in a translation by Toronto's go-to German, Birgit Schreyer Duarte – does comes off as more clever than deep or subtle, with Corcoran's production sometimes moving on too swiftly from its more emotionally complicated elements.
That makes it seems like a light, cotton companion to the dark, multifibre complexity of The Golden Dragon, the veteran German playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig's somewhat similarly structured, but more nightmarish musing on the global village, seen a few years back at the Tarragon Theatre.
In terms of acting amid this whirlwind, Wright strikes the most satisfying tone – giving a slight edge to her performance whether playing Magellan (with a hilarious limp), or a series of over-eager international arts journalists trying to analyze Patrick's photo. Nozuka provides a heart to the play as Patrick, while Khan is always amusing in his many roles.
But the central relationship between Thomas and Katherine – which the script returns to at regular intervals – doesn't have the impact it should. It comes down to Cox, who doesn't seem to be really listening to her stage partner or connecting with her part yet.
It could be that all the running around, kicking soccer balls, stuffing cloth into bags and switching characters takes some getting used to. One suspects the Das Ding cast will grow more comfortable with the theatrical equivalent of patting their head while rubbing their bellies at the same time as the run continues – and maybe all eventually demonstrate the deceptively casual precision of Wright's performance.
There's time – from Canadian Stage, this Theatre Smash co-production travels to the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Ganonoque, Ont., in September.
Das Ding continues to May 1 (canadianstage.com).