By Sherry MacDonald. Directed by Kevin McKendrick. A Damfino Theatre production. At the Waterfront Theatre on Friday, October 26. Continues until November 10

Sherry MacDonald's The Stone Face is full of original theatricality and challenging ideas, but they don't pan out because there's not enough of a narrative to move it out of abstraction.

That's surprising, because the play is about the collaboration between Samuel Beckett, Buster Keaton, and director Alan Schneider on Beckett's first movie, Film. Keaton's wife, Eleanor, who looked after his business and artistic interests, also becomes a major collaborator.

Because Schneider doesn't understand the comic perspective the others share, he is the outsider, and MacDonald plays with that in interesting ways. The set for Film includes a root cellar. It's fake, but Beckett and the Keatons are all able to mime walking down into it–and they come back up with real apples and jam. For Schneider, the imaginary steps remain a solid floor. MacDonald allows a mute, younger version of Keaton to wander through the action; the others accept him, but the literalist Schneider can't. Nothing much is at stake in the director's frustration, though. His problem is never rooted in a particular and fleshed-out personal relationship. It remains an abstract idea, and it gets repetitive.

Kyle Rideout does some lovely physical work as the young Keaton, but director Kevin McKendrick makes him do boringly long set changes. Terence Kelly is an amiably animated Beckett, and Anna Hagan is slyly intelligent as Eleanor, who is MacDonald's most intriguing character. Allan Zinyk is perfectly understated as Schneider, but Alex Diakun's work as Keaton isn't precise enough to be a successful homage.

The ideas and relationships in The Stone Face are tantalizingly set up in Act 1, but fail to develop in Act 2.

Link: Damfino Theatre