Art Frame: March 2020

Tuesday, March 10, 2020

MOB

Centaur Theatre / 51th Season

MOB

English-language Premiere

Written by Catherine-Anne TOUPIN

Translation by Chris CAMPBELL

Directed by Andrew SHAVER

With: Susan BAIN | Matthew KABWE | Adrianne RICHARDS

March 3 – 29, 2020

This play was written by a Quebec TV and film star Catherine-Anne Toupin. The original French production of La meute (the French title of MOB) first played at Montreal's Théâtre La Licorne in January 2018. It enjoyed an immediate box office and critics' success and was re-staged at La Licorne in the summer 2018, and once again in the fall 2019. Catherine-Anne Toupin played the principal character Sophie in all French productions of this play. She is also admired by numerous fans for her roles in highly successful Quebec TV series Boomerang and Unité 9.

Sophie, the MOB's principal character, is a highly skilled professional with a 20 years experience in her field. She loses her job under nerve-racking, sinister circumstances. Disturbed and hurt, she drives out of town, eventually stopping at a B&B run by aging Louise and her engaging nephew Martin. Several booze-fortified evenings lead to more direct verbal exchanges between Martin and Sophie, resulting in an irksome scheming between the two. It is only at that point one becomes aware that the play is a clever psychological chiller with the most revealing ending.

The play deals with a wide-spread and even intensifying phenomenon which also might have touched others in the audience. Under stress, Sophie talks to herself as if in a split-personality type of state. Though this might only be a theatrical device to elucidate better her tragic reality, it is not unusual to experiences a crack, a split in one's psyche under psychological duress. In the world with the falling moral and ethical standards, when ethics and spirituality are being viewed by many as something useless and outdated, the round-about face changes in play's characters point to a much more disturbing phenomenon in the psychological make-up of our society.

Be prepared for explosive shouting and obscenities and other play's sinister and disturbing elements, thought many might also find funny elements in it. Catherine-Anne Toupin positions herself as a black humor comedian.