PRIVATEEYES REVIEW SERIES
Private Eyes success this summer brings to mind another Canadian series canceled after five seasons by a Canadian network - Murdoch Mysteries. CTV National News (CTV) MTWTFSS 925,000.CTV Evening News Weekend (CTV) SS 1,019,000.America’s Got Talent (Citytv) Tues 1,131,000.Here’s a look at the top-10 in Live+7 totals among viewers 2+ according to Numeris: It even outdrew the launch of a new import hour on Global the same night - the re-boot of Fantasy Island, which came in third. 15 in English Canada.Īll this without any simulcast boost and up against Olympic coverage earlier this summer. It has consistently been Canada’s most-watched scripted series every week and ranks No.
The Jason Priestley/Cindy Sampson Toronto-based detective drama has owned the summer of ’21, averaging over a million viewers a week. It’s an impressive first outing for the fledgling theater company.What is vying with naming Mike Richards the new host of Jeopardy for Worst Call in Television for 2021? Global’s decision to announce, before it aired, that this would be the fifth and final season of Private Eyes. The play’s devices are cleverly rendered, and the Fern Theatre handles a tricky drama with accurate vision and a tidy, streamlined production. Moreover, “Private Eyes” seems derivative of Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” and Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing.” Why not just watch the real thing? And some of the play’s elements - the extramarital affair, the therapy sessions - seem like theatrical cliches, ubiquitous and slightly anonymous tropes of contemporary theater.ĭespite the script’s inherent problems (can we really care about what’s in front of us if we suspect it’s all an authorial trick?), the cast gives a set of tight, smart, convincing portrayals. Mary Saville as Cory, the waitress, private eye and abandoned wife, and King as the therapist add welcome notes of comedic lightness to the evening.Īlthough the play is compelling, there’s something disheartening about not knowing whether what we’re witnessing is “real.” No one likes to feel tricked in the “maybe it was all a dream” sense. We the audience must follow the characters into each new situation with some sense of trust and interest, or all is lost. An ironic wink or exaggerated sense of fantasy would be a disaster here. The actors who portray the central love triangle - Graham, Durie and Frawley - bring a realistic and committed sense of connection to the action, which is crucial. Much of anyone’s life is composed of “what ifs.” How does something we fantasize about, such as an affair, become a reality? Even if we never do it, can it not still have an effect on our lives? Doesn’t all this daydreaming accumulate into something significant?
“Private Eyes” provokes some nice contemplation of the meaning and implication of fantasies and daydreams. The multiple, often conflicting layers are revealed in lurching jolts - we suddenly realize that what we’ve witnessed is a play rehearsal when Adrian (Jonathan Durie), the director, suddenly tells the couple to “take five.” In another scene, the love triangle goes out for lunch and is feted by a waitress with leis and party hats as the millionth table served, which gives things a David Lynch level of comic unreality. It’s a small cast of characters, composed of two enmeshed couples and the therapist, and the stripped-down production keeps the focus tightly on the action. The play is given a smart and capable reading by the five principals. Matthew feels so beleaguered that when he sees his therapist, Frank (John Stephen King), he re-enacts and reinvents situations as he would have preferred they had turned out.
The deception and falsehoods become metatextual as the couple, a pair of actors, rehearse a play, the plot of which uncannily mirrors their own situation. Lisa (Rachel Frawley) is having an affair, and her partner, Matthew (Doug Graham), seems to be in the dark, though he may or may not be clued in to what’s going on. The play is a pinwheel-eyed, kaleidoscopic look at a couple caught up in complex maneuvers of deception. The new Atlanta group the Fern Theatre is giving Steven Dietz’s 1996 hit “Private Eyes” a spin in 7 Stages Theatre’s black-box space through August 25. In a love triangle (from left): Jonathan Durie, Rachel Frawley and Doug Graham.
0 kommentar(er)
