A Tango With the Crowd
by Jason Booker
“There aren't any more bullets,” shouts one character – earning one of the funniest moments of the night. Ajax (por nobody) proves that isn’t quite true. Within the first four scenes, the play deals with polyamory, bestiality, incest, homoeroticism, bulimia, genitalia, disability and pornography – the show casts its net far and wide for subject matter, often hoping to offend and provoke. However, it also manages to find a funny way to bring all these issues to the surface – assuming you have a macabre sense of humour.
Alternately bold, brash, crude, cruel, graphic, ugly, funny but always unforgettable, Ajax (por nobody), a four person play by Alice Tuan has been called unstageable but that makes for quite a ride in this premiere full-scale staging. Annette and Alma (Ingrid Rae Doucet in a stunning turn), one dressed in a see-through shirt and the other lustily devouring a pomegranate, start the show preparing their home for a social evening preparing wienettes (as they call their cocktail wienies) with Jesse and Alex, two studs hoping to get laid.
This production nicely manages to deal with the challenges of staging Tuan’s work, while always keeping a sense of humour – not to say it becomes campy, though it has in-jokes and obscured sexual actions behind the bubble-wrap backdrop – but the pacing is sharp (aside from one lengthy monologue about God) and the tone is kept light, even during the impending disaster of the finale, which is beautifully aided by the lighting.
The show, reminiscent of Sarah Kane’s often uncomfortable and challenging work, not only maintains a sense of logic and grounding throughout, it never pushes the audience away completely, even during some of the more grotesque moments, always delicately and intelligently handled by director Zack Russell, fight director Casey Hudecki and lighting designer Jeremy Powell. Some of the more clever solutions that are staged involve the use of the titular household cleanser Ajax, which also ties into the Greek myth through the character’s brutal strength and inability to be injured; no matter how vicious these characters get, no one seems to be fazed.
The performances occasionally fall flat as Vivien Endicott-Douglas’ drunkenness broadens into staggering hiccups after her amusing vampy opening or David Christo’s iciness cools the passion in a scene instead of igniting it but his rage later reclaims it. But in a play where the nastiness of the characters and the bitterness of the punchlines keep the conflicts rolling along, sometimes the performances can become caricatures or wallflowers (as Philip Stonhouse does, shifting from leading man to accessory) to the dynamics of the exciting script.
What is the deeper meaning of the play? What was the audience supposed to take away from the show? I’m not entirely sure. Ajax shakes you into alertness but does it do more than that? Maybe, I’m just still pondering through what Tuan and Russell intended that to be. That said, it certainly is an exciting ride to go on.
