Retreat: when spirit animals are dragged to the surface
4 Mar 2019

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Scott Gorman

The formidable but fragile Candace Matchwick has a strict rule for those participating in the activities at her character-building Camp Foster: campers will only consume what they can gather or kill. So when she passes around the mason jars of moonshine she is forced to explain that, "Nature made it. I just let it ferment."

That is a precise metaphor for Retreat itself. Playwright Kat Sandler (Bang Bang, Mustard, Late Night, Bright Lights, Liver, Cockfight, Sucker, Delicacy, Rock) takes a simple natural premise and ferments it into absurd delicious drunken madness. With the side effect of violence intact. Initially some of the comic interplay and one-liners get lost in the vastness of Hart House Theatre but once director Claire Burns (I Cook He Does the Dishes, The Baby) and the game cast get their bearings, the action escalates and the laughs and gasps come at a very gratifying, and overlapping, pace. 

Four interns at a corporate firm are sent to Camp Foster for unspecified purposes. It may be a team building exercise or, as one opines, "This isn't camp, this is The Hunger Games." On one level, Sandler is satirizing the vicious competitiveness that is the corporate world, but she is also using it as tool to show that it is human nature, or just nature, to claw one's way to the top. A slim moral to construct a play upon but, like the abundance of nature, Sandler also riffs on sex roles, sexual violence, the fragility of masculinity, emotional greed, religion, etc, etc. Some of them are sidebars but when they are as sidesplittingly funny and delivered with the smooth precision of a sharp knife through flesh, the gags and insights are cumulative rather than distracting.

Of course our hapless campers all have secrets or motivations that contradict or amplify their main character traits. Layers pile upon layers as Matchwick also bestows on each camper a spirit animal name that likewise contradicts or amplifies a trait that, in her hapless all-knowing manner, only she can presciently see. Nerdy Paul/Wise Gazelle (Tony Tran) reveals a significantly deviant desire as well as sweet seductiveness. Chilly but sultry Terri Pimblett as Nicole/Ladybeetle wields her sexuality as a weapon that is also her weak spot. Macho man, right down to the mud flap tattoo on a sexy bear bicep, Jordan/Brave Lion (Sebastian Biasucci) is sheer physical maleness and utterly sexually vulnerable. Delicate Kira/Otterbox (Brittany Clough) gets the biggest laugh when she transforms. It is such a good gag that it is repeated. And is just as funny the second and third time.  

All four of them are excellent and navigate the rat-a-tat rhythms of the copious dialogue with skill and naturalism. With a bit more speed - the audience should not be allowed to ponder why Wise Gazelle would be willing to give up his advantage just for a glimpse of one of Otterbox's breasts - and ability to predict where the pauses for laughs need to fall, Retreat will zip along like comedic clockwork. It must have been difficult to choose where the emphases should fall, I gave up taking notes as they were so many lines I wanted to savour, but knew the next should not be missed. Only in hindsight did I note that all the clues and motivations were there, I was just having too much fun and was too full of anticipation for them to register other than subliminally.

Of course the star role is that of the conflicted and diva-esque Candace Matchwick. Burns claims that Pearle Harbour (Chautauqua, Pearle Harbour's Sunday School) is the only performer she could imagine in the role but fortunately it isn't stunt casting, not that there would be anything wrong with that. Harbour can make an entrance, arch an eyebrow, flex a clumsy gam, or deliver a double entendre without breaking a nail, but she also plays Matchwick's tragic flaws with more subtlety than burlesque. Her intimate interactions with Tran are quite touching and she modulates into high camp realism for her final monologue that rivets as much as the copious violence and gore it punctuates. She earns her spectacular exit, complete with devastating double take, and the spontaneous applause it generates.

Retreat is minor Sandler but majorly entertaining. And Harbour on the 'legitimate' stage is a concept that bears repeating. There is no question that the audience enjoyed the spectacle of the corporately ambitious ripped to shreds. Clough's amazon brute entrance - she almost, almost, upstages Harbour - earns a roar of approval, of recognition of our own base violent tendencies. Those primal urges are always there, fermenting under our scout uniforms of choice, and it is very cathartic to let them loose vicariously.