Naomi Simpson (left) and Casey Austin in Scorched

The Ties that Bind

Scorched is a touching and terrifying journey

There are times when we go to the theatre for entertainment and escapism, and there are times when we go to the theatre and are presented with a reality so powerful and terrifying that we're thankful to return to our own lives when we leave. Theatre Inconnu's production of Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad's Scorched falls squarely into the latter category, and is a moving and disturbing portrait of a family dealing with the consequences of conflict, silence and the suffering we inflict on one another.

Scorched opens with Alphonse Lebel (Paddy Crawford), a bumbling notary who is presenting 22-year-old twins Janine (Sara Asyyed) and Simon (Inconnu regular Michael Shewchuk) with their late mother Nawal's last will and testament. We learn that Nawal (who is portrayed in flashbacks by Casey Austin) had spent the last five years in silence and made some rather unusual final requests, asking her children to find a father they thought was dead and a brother they didn't know existed. As Janine tries to piece together her mother's past from the very few clues she left behind, the children begin a journey to Nawal's homeland—and the reason for her lengthy silence.

Although the country is never expressly named, the timeline fits with that of the Lebanese Civil War.  One imagines Mouawad wanted to keep the location anonymous to ensure the play's emphasis was more on the characters as opposed to the specific conflict, and Inconnu's approach reinforces that attitude; there is not really a set to speak of—just an ex-shaped black stage with a couple of stairs and three black cubes—and the costumes, designed by Michelle Lo, are very simple. This leaves it up to the cast and script to carry the audience through what can, at times, be a very tension-filled three hours—a challenge these seven actors are more than up for. While all of them pulled their weight—most taking on multiple roles—highlights would have to be Austin's powerful turn as Nawal, Crawford's Alphonse, whose constant muddling of adages provided some much-needed levity ("I think we're seeing the train at the end of the tunnel," he says) and Shewchuk's angry, angst-ridden portrayal of Simon.  Director Clayton Jevne keep his actors moving on the small set, sometimes circling around the stage and up its steps—a move I found puzzling at times, but I can honestly say that, despite a lack of props, a simple set and some very lengthy, verbose chunks of script, I was never bored by either the performers or the direction.

Scorched has a three-hour run time, and while there were a few scenes that could have been trimmed, some dialogue that the performers tripped over and a slow start to the story—I found I wasn't really pulled in until we journeyed back to Nawal's homeland—this production is well worth staying up on a school night . . . just make sure you have someone to chat about your experience with afterwards. Simultaneously beautiful and horrifying, Scorched, as Jevne writes in the program, is a challenging and significant work—and one that is expertly interpreted by a theatre company who doesn't shy away from accepting said challenges.

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Scorched
To November 21
Intrepid Theatre Club, 1609 Blanshard
Tickets $14-$14
theatreinconnu.com