{"id":24034,"date":"2023-06-07T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2023-06-07T16:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=24034"},"modified":"2023-06-02T14:11:32","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T21:11:32","slug":"the-guardsman-plays-on-the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2023\/06\/07\/the-guardsman-plays-on-the-agony-and-ecstasy-of-love\/","title":{"rendered":"The Guardsman<\/em> plays on the agony and ecstasy of love"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s written by Molnar,\u201d says director Kevin McKendrick. \u201cMolnar, he\u2019s probably considered one of Hungary\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
The Guardsman<\/em> director Kevin McKendrick says the play is about love and jealousy (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

McKendrick says that when the play was first produced, Molnar was dismayed that the audiences found it to be extremely funny.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMany of the versions that we\u2019ve 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,\u201d he says. \u201cBut the version we\u2019ve got, it\u2019s not that it\u2019s dark, we\u2019re not doing Ibsen or Strindberg here, but this adaptation tries to touch more on the kind of serious and gut-wrenching aspects of love\u2014to be so in love that you may lose everything, and you might be totally wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has these affairs for six months, and then she moves on to somebody else,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich 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\u2019re looking for a new lover?\u2019<\/p>\n

This is where the humour shows up in The Guardsman<\/i>, in the anxiety and jealousy.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s either convinced that she\u2019s going to throw him over for somebody else, even though they\u2019re married, or he has to prove it,\u201d says McKendrick. \u201cJust as Othello<\/i> talked about jealousy as the green-eyed monster, which leads to tragedy in that play, there\u2019s definitely a green-eyed monster in this play, but it leads to comedy, because somehow this actor decides, you know, \u2018I\u2019m 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\u2019s not really in love with me, but it will also prove that I\u2019m the greatest actor in the world, if I can, you know, convince her that I\u2019m somebody else and get her to fall in love with me.\u2019 So, it\u2019s this very cruel dichotomy that\u2019s going on in this character.\u201d<\/p>\n

McKendrick says that there are big questions concerning personal identity in this this play.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a play within a play,\u201d says McKendrick. \u201cYou know, \u2018Who am I with her love or without her love, regardless of what I\u2019ve achieved in life? How do I measure my worth? How do I measure my actual standing, if I can\u2019t even trust my wife?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Anxiety aside, McKendrick says this is a play about love.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about love, absolutely, the cruelty and the comedy of love,\u201d says McKendrick. \u201cYou 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\u2019s why we go to the theatre\u2014to experience these uncomfortable moments in a safe environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardsman
\n<\/i>Various times,
\nTuesday, July 4
\nto Sunday, July 16
\nVarious prices,
\nBlue Bridge Theatre
\nbluebridgetheatre.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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. \u201cIt\u2019s written by Molnar,\u201d says director Kevin McKendrick. \u201cMolnar, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24035,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-june-7-2023"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24034"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24036,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24034\/revisions\/24036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}