Farewell, My Lovely is a stylish yet hollow affair

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      By Aaron Bushkowsky. Based on the novel by Raymond Chandler. Directed by Craig Hall. An Arts Club Theatre and Vertigo Theatre coproduction. At the Arts Club’s Granville Island Stage on Thursday, April 9. Continues until May 2

      Farewell, My Lovely is a hollow exercise in style—and that’s why it’s boring.

      In Vancouver playwright Aaron Bushkowsky’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel, we meet Chandler’s iconic private investigator, Philip Marlowe, as he’s working on a pair of apparently unrelated cases in Los Angeles. It’s 1941.

      In the first case, a recently released con named Moose hires Marlowe to track down his ex-girlfriend, Velma. In the second, Marlowe accompanies a dapper guy named Marriott, who says he needs protection as he buys back stolen jewellery. On that little jaunt up the Pacific Coast Highway, Marlowe gets knocked out with a crowbar, but, fortunately for him, the beautiful Annie Riordon, a cop’s daughter with an interest in local crime, comes to his rescue.

      This show, which the Arts Club coproduced with Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre, looks fantastic. Scott Reid’s stylish set is full of sliding art deco panels. And production designer Jamie Nesbitt splashes film noir–style projections all over them—both videos and still images. So we get moody, classy renderings of everything from gritty L.A. streets to a moonlit boat trip.

      But the tale itself is ridiculously hard to follow or care about. There’s a whole bunch of stuff about a psychic and the Mob and a corrupt judge, but there’s not enough humanity to give it meaning.

      On an emotional level, Farewell, My Lovely is about tough talkers aiming at love—and missing. Three women flirt heavily with Marlowe and he’s interested in at least two of them. Besides Annie, Marlowe’s harem includes a washed-up nightclub singer named Jessie and Helen, the judge’s seductive young wife.

      But, given Graham Percy’s performance as Marlowe in this mounting, why are these dames throwing themselves at him? Traditionally, Marlowe’s appeal is about downbeat, masculine reserve: think Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep. The guy is meant to be hardboiled, but Percy’s Marlowe is more poached. He’s soft. In film noir terms, that’s just not hot.

      Emma Slipp (Annie) and Lucia Frangione (Jessie) do their best with weak material. Of the women, Helen gets the liveliest scenes and Jamie Konchak finds a deliciously stylish groove.

      Anthony F. Ingram hits the perfect note of prissy eccentricity as Marriott. And, as a cop named Nulty, Stephen Hair also has finds the slight but juicy exaggeration the period style requires.

      Still, the script is pretty much a rout, although it does feature some great one-liners, including Marriott’s “Irritating people usually wear bow ties. It makes them harder to strangle.”

      Comments

      1 Comments

      noired out

      Apr 13, 2015 at 12:57pm

      Tear the Curtain...Helen Lawrence...Farewell My Lovely...are we there yet?