REVIEW: Veteran actors Scott Wentworth and Walter Borden take a dreamlike road trip in intimate world premiere
iPhoto caption: Scott Wentworth and Walter Borden in 'An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies.' Photo by Seamus Easton.
Did you really exist if no one remembers you after you die?
Dandelion Theatre’s world premiere production An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies is an existential rumination on life, death, and friendship — and for me, a gentle reminder to tell people you love them while you still can.
To explore these themes, playwright D. Halpern and director Max Ackerman craft a surreal journey that follows two old friends in their 80s as they embark on a drug-fuelled road trip through the desert towards death. The journey isn’t always smooth — there are detours and the occasional lull — but a highly experienced pair of lead actors keeps it engaging.
Maximizing every inch of the intimate Red Sandcastle Theatre stage, set designers Sahana Dharmaraj and Kevan Cress have prepared a life-sized cross-section of a car for this road trip, with two transparent chairs for the front seats. The hood is made of translucent, corrugated plastic that lighting designers Lidia Foote and Cress illuminate in hues of pinks and purples, giving it an otherworldly glow. It’s a mesmerizing effect that captured my attention as soon as I entered the space.
A simple backdrop of white curtains is the other key set piece, and projection designers Cress and Seamus Easton use it to display images of changing scenery: from dry barren lands to crashing waves, and from a starry night to dawn’s orange glow.
A digital projection is also where the production slowly begins. Tinged with nostalgia and accompanied by The National’s melancholy cover of “Peggy-O”, a video montage (photography and cinematography by Easton) establishes the show’s introspective and wistful tone.
Over 90 minutes, the central characters — referred to in the program only as Number One (Scott Wentworth) and Number Two (Walter Borden) — reminisce, joke, argue, philosophize, and take drugs as they drive. They flip through old yearbooks, and vividly remember someone who passed away during their childhood, a grief that persists all these decades later. They talk about Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. They surface their own fear and acceptance of death, as well as their desire to be remembered, to be reincarnated, or to even reach paradise.
It’s a complicated friendship which had ebbed and flowed over the course of their lives. There are still secrets and things unsaid. There is banter, and there is bitterness. Through their conversations, we learn about significant life events for each character, like a marriage or funeral, that the other didn’t show up for, or even know about. But for this final journey, death, they have chosen to reunite.
Wentworth and Borden are Canadian theatre titans, with expansive repertoires built over decades on stage, including acclaimed appearances at the Stratford Festival. Their charismatic performances bring considerable emotional weight, with natural chemistry that is consistently engaging to watch, even when the narrative meanders and occasionally falters.
Clad in a leather jacket, Wentworth portrays Number One with a temperamental, brash energy that initially masks his desperate desire to feel less alone as he drives towards his own death. Borden, dressed in a thick sweater, brings a gentler, more measured presence that slowly melts away to reveal a somewhat self-centred undercurrent. Together, their dynamic is magnetic, and it’s a joy to simply witness two incredibly skilled actors doing what they do best.
Watching them interact, there are moments that made me think of Waiting for Godot — not just because of the sparse setting (a car, a desert road), or the existential themes, or the sense of time as endless and ephemeral. It’s also the circuitous way certain conversations repeat, and how the duo talks over and at each other, sometimes solely focused on their own thoughts. In Beckett’s play, however, Vladimir and Estragon have no memories from a shared youth.
But Halpern’s characters are defined by their shared past, and this can sometimes create an odd dissonance in how the narrative portrays Number One and Number Two. They vividly colour memories of their high-school days with deep emotion, while adulthood blurs into the background, having seemingly had little impact on them. The more recent deaths of a child or a spouse feel somehow smaller in comparison to the loss of a childhood companion long ago. Their adult lives come across as strangely hollow, with much of the conversation, memory, and emotion reserved for their bygone youth, or their impending demise. I found myself curious about the selves they became between 20 and 80 — the lives they lived between now and then.
It’s a testament to how completely Wentworth and Borden inhabited their roles that I was hoping to dive deeper and really get to know more about their characters before my time with them came to an end.
Near the conclusion of the play, Number One offers a thought: “We all inevitably destroy beautiful things in a weak attempt to understand them.” Perhaps this play, too, isn’t asking to be understood, but experienced — a quiet invitation to sit with what’s being shared, and to appreciate what’s in front of us.
An Orchid and Other Such Lilies and Lies runs at the Red Sandcastle Theatre until November 23. More information is available here.
Sania Hameed wrote this review as part of Page Turn, a professional development network for emerging arts writers, funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and administered by Neworld Theatre.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Sania Hameed
Sania Hameed (she/her) fell in love with the performing arts over a decade ago, and has been committed to her passion for live theatre ever since. Fringe is her favourite time of the year. While she primarily spends her days working in post-secondary education and attending shows, she still finds time to hone her birding skills in anticipation of her second favourite time of the year (spring migration).
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