Alunia Threatre's new play closes on Saturday
Rhoma
Spencer uses the Force in the new play, The Solitudes
By
Stephen Weir
Take
a bow, Rhoma Spencer, take a bow. You are the toast of Toronto’s theatre world
for your current role in the new assembly play The Solitudes. Critical reviews.
A quarter page colour picture of you in the Toronto Star. And there is an
incredible TTC poster of you with hands on hips glaring and scaring all of us
riding the Red Rocket this month.
Rhoma
Spencer is an actor, director, storyteller and broadcast journalist who began her
career in her birth nation of Trinidad & Tobago.
On
stage, performing in TV shows, movies parts, and public events; heck, I have
even seen her in costume at a high profile Scarborough funeral a few weeks ago.
Now based for the most part here in Toronto, Spencer continues to be one of the
busiest live performance actresses in the city.
This
week she is a brooding, scowling and sometimes hilarious presence on the
Harbourfront stage with the Alunia Theatre’s new production of The Solitudes.
Written and directed by artistic director Beatriz Pizano, this plot-less play
has eight women on stage for 90 minutes passionately emoting about how they got
here and what life is like for them in Canada. Some of the actresses shone,
others plodded, but no one can touch the power of Rhoma Spencer. She has the
Force. No surprise all eyes in the theatre are zeroed, laser style, on Spencer.
The
eight women follow the thread of history and the bloodlines that brought each
of them to this country. Is this a home or a “homeland?” Their offering: eight
recipes for transforming our own solitudes.
Be
it an indigenous survivor of residential schools, an Arabian woman who makes it
through the Armenian genocide, a Polish Jew, the sole
And
what about our Rhoma? It is hard to tell what comes out of her mouth – is it
fiction or is it an ad-libbed truth about her own life.
Writer
director Beatriz Pizano has built a script based in part upon the 1967 novel by
Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez mashed up with the personal stories of
the individual actresses working the play. The Solitudes describes itself as
being “a provocative, humorous, and visually charged experimental performance”.
Spencer
plays three different but interconnected women. There is the Ghanaian Rhoma de-
fending her African traditions of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). And there is
the Trinidadian obeah dishing out love potions and sage advice. We also meet
the Toronto-Rhoma dealing with her weight, the diets she has tried and failed,
the comments she has had to endure.
She
is the tallest and biggest person on stage. Spencer never just stands or sits,
she stares and glares at the audience as she spins out her lines. She makes her
body tell the story. A flick of hand, raised eyebrow, even the way she
breathes; this woman has the Force.
 |
| Rhoma Spencer |
Rhoma
dominates an argument she has with Italian actress Rosalba Martinni, as she
demands the right for her community to practice FGM. So scary and powerful is
her delivery, someone in the audience (or was it from the stage) asks if she is
for real or is that just part of the script!
It
is a tough play for the male species to watch. It is not that we males come off
badly?it is just we don’t come off at all. Men get scant mention in this
script. This is really a woman’s play about, by and, for women.
Back
in my school days, it was compulsory to read and study Two Solitudes by Hugh
MacLennan. The book’s title refers to a perceived lack of communication, and
moreover a lack of will to communicate, between French and English Canadians.
Written
in 1945, the novel helped students understand the great di- vide that existed between
Quebec and the rest of the country. Seventy-five years later there are way more
than a couple of Solitudes – this play teaches us about the impact of
separation that have overtaken women’s lives be they indigenous or new
arrivals.
The
play is currently showing at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre (231 Queens Quay
West) and ends Saturday night. If you do manage to get a ticket, make sure you
give a standing oh at the end like I did – you have to, Rhoma Spencer is
glaring at ya.
Cast:
Lara Arabian, Brefny Caribou, Liliana Suarez, Janis Mayers, Rosalba Martinni,
Michelle Polak, Sofia Rodriguez, and Rhoma Spencer.
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