The character of the child is one of the most treacherous roles in theatre, TV and film.
Precocious cutesiness is a potential pitfall. Many of us loved Emmanuel Lewis’s Webster, Gilda Radner’s bed-jumping Judy Miller and Lily Tomlin’s Edith Ann. But despite the laughs, these creations tended towards caricature rather than three-dimensionality.
Canadian actor/playwright Kristen Thomson mostly avoids cuteness overload in her 2001 play I, Claudia. The one-woman show, starring Kathleen O’Reilly as 12-year-old sparkplug Claudia, has been revived by Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre.
Thomson created a young person as quirky, imaginative and real as Holden Caufield or Adrian Mole. Yes, Claudia is occasionally cloying, but she’s mostly adorable and unquestionably memorable.
We meet Claudia in her sanctuary, the basement boiler room of her school, where she struggles to work through myriad problems. She’s ill-treated by mean girls; her dad has abandoned his family to marry a bimbo; her mother is so depressed she spends sunny days in bed.
O’Reilly, wearing different commedia dell’art half masks, presents a handful of characters in this 90-minute (no intermission) show. Girlfriend Leslie is a damaged party girl desperate for love. Claudia’s grandfather, Douglas, is a charming and whimsical being who seems somewhat extraneous to the plot. We also meet Drachman the school janitor, an elderly Eastern European who serves as both semi-mystical narrator and ringmaster.
Clad in a plaid skirt and a fuzzy toque, Claudia is (thanks to her mask) a doughy-faced adolescent brimming with wonder and enthusiasm. She marvels at her pet goldfish Romeo and Juliet; she rages at adults who quiz her about her nascent puberty. Claudia detests her dad’s paramour who’s so buxom it appears “flying saucers from another planet (have) landed on her chest.” She writes heartfelt poetry, covets her late grandmother’s cameo broach, places her mother’s hairs on her father’s pillow in hopes he’ll warm to her once again.
It’s possible some things that were charming 20 years ago haven’t aged particularly well. Claudia’s habit of saying “I know, right?” can be irritating. And her Steve Erkel nerdiness can seem overly precious, as when she concludes in a school essay that, because her goldfish don’t talk to her, it’s merely because they cannot speak English.
Claudia is nonetheless a compelling and sympathetic character. She declares herself “vulnerable” and genuinely seems so. One of the playwright’s aims is to illustrate the tragedy of childhood innocence lost as it butts up against the reality of the adult world. One of the most heart-breaking aspects of Claudia is her brave attempts to disguise her hurt over her parents’ breakup for fear it would upset them. She’s a girl who’s obliged to mature quickly, perhaps too much so.
Director Treena Stubel has a strong background in dance and physical theatre. And like Stubel, O’Reilly has studied the Lecoq method. Not surprisingly, the pair have co-created a performance placing special emphasis on the physical. Claudia is in a state of constant movement — wiggling, dancing, gesticulating — that reflects her nimble and restless mind. Stubel and O’Reilly have devised a specific movement vocabulary for each character, something that works well.
O’Reilly is a solid performer who’s managed a daunting feat of memorization. Her portrayal of Claudia was the strongest of the four characters. Thursday’s performance lost momentum in spots, seeming to ramble two-thirds of the way through. Part of the problem lies in the script. The playwright’s strength is portraying characters with deftness and complexity. However, the narrative — essentially scattershot snapshots of Claudia’s life — is light on plot.
I, Claudia continues at the Roxy Theatre to May 8. The theatre has a limited seating capacity of 50 per cent due to COVID concerns.
