The Blue Bridge Theatre on Quadra Street was once the Roxy movie theatre and was known for its unique taste in movie choices. Now doing live theatre instead of screen, Blue Bridge has kept the tradition of uniqueness alive with its new production of The Guardsman.
“It’s written by Molnar,” says director Kevin McKendrick. “Molnar, he’s probably considered one of Hungary’s greatest, or most celebrated, playwrights. This particular play he wrote when he was about 32 years of age, and he was having a wild love affair with Budapest’s leading actress. That ended badly, and he seriously contemplated suicide. Rather than kill himself, he wrote this play, and it really shows as a play about the nature of jealousy, or, I guess, the nature of love. I think I would best describe it as the agony and the ecstasy of love, or the cruelty of love.”
McKendrick says that when the play was first produced, Molnar was dismayed that the audiences found it to be extremely funny.
“Many of the versions that we’ve seen, you know, for the decades that this play has been kicking around in the English theatre, have been treated as kind of a romantic comedy,” he says. “But the version we’ve got, it’s not that it’s dark, we’re not doing Ibsen or Strindberg here, but this adaptation tries to touch more on the kind of serious and gut-wrenching aspects of love—to be so in love that you may lose everything, and you might be totally wrong.”
McKendrick says that the premise of the play is that the two main characters are approaching the six-month anniversary of their marriage, but with that comes something much darker.
“She has these affairs for six months, and then she moves on to somebody else,” he says, “which raises questions of what does one search for in life that gives them meaning, that sustains for longer than six months? Or, how do you find fulfillment in life, and love, if every six months you’re looking for a new lover?’
This is where the humour shows up in The Guardsman, in the anxiety and jealousy.
“He’s either convinced that she’s going to throw him over for somebody else, even though they’re married, or he has to prove it,” says McKendrick. “Just as Othello talked about jealousy as the green-eyed monster, which leads to tragedy in that play, there’s definitely a green-eyed monster in this play, but it leads to comedy, because somehow this actor decides, you know, ‘I’m going to go into disguise and see if I can woo my wife as somebody else to make her fall in love with me. That will prove that she’s not really in love with me, but it will also prove that I’m the greatest actor in the world, if I can, you know, convince her that I’m somebody else and get her to fall in love with me.’ So, it’s this very cruel dichotomy that’s going on in this character.”
McKendrick says that there are big questions concerning personal identity in this this play.
“It’s really a play within a play,” says McKendrick. “You know, ‘Who am I with her love or without her love, regardless of what I’ve achieved in life? How do I measure my worth? How do I measure my actual standing, if I can’t even trust my wife?’”
Anxiety aside, McKendrick says this is a play about love.
“It’s about love, absolutely, the cruelty and the comedy of love,” says McKendrick. “You know, it just makes us kind of uncomfortable because there is a certain truth to it. You can be laughing at one moment, and you can be clutching your heart realizing of the agony this guy is going through. I think it is a very human thing, and that’s why we go to the theatre—to experience these uncomfortable moments in a safe environment.”
The Guardsman
Various times,
Tuesday, July 4
to Sunday, July 16
Various prices,
Blue Bridge Theatre
bluebridgetheatre.ca