Photo credit: Zemekiss Photograpy
Review by Issie Patterson
Any reader well-acquainted with author John Irving’s love for the uncanny will be delighted with Pacific Theater’s simultaneously hilarious and moving adaptation of his seventh novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. Adapted for the stage by Simon Bent and directed by Ian Farthing, the play mimics the original story with impressive accuracy, in which timeless John Irving heroes come stunningly to life onstage.“A Prayer for Owen Meany” is told in bits in pieces on a complex timeline that spans decades but closely follows through-lines of faith and doubt, life and death, and questions about the meaning of fate.
Johnny Wheelwright, played with a heart-wrenching and at times appropriately pitiful touch by Tariq Leslie, has both the joy and misfortune of befriending tiny, precocious Owen Meany (Chris Lam) whose high-pitched, mickey mouse shriek stays true to the original text’s description (Meany’s voice is described by Irving among many unflattering adjectives as “wrecked”). The joy of befriending young Owen Meany lies in Meany’s sharp intelligence, unfaltering faith, and his keen eye for adult-world bullshit (and willingness to call it out), even at the age of ten. The misfortune lies in the fact that Owen Meany accidentally kills Johnny’s kind-hearted, borderline angelic mother (Alexis Kellum-Creer) with a home-run baseball.
Chris Lam does an admirable job of playing a character who has made such a mark on the literary world. Lam imbues Owen Meany—who is mocked by both children and adults alike for his small stature and mouse voice—with intelligence, power and depth. Although Meany is the unintentional fodder for comedic moments (for both onstage characters and the audience), Lam also plays Owen Meany’s serious moments beautifully—such as when he glimpses at his own grave stone while performing as a ghost in A Christmas Carol as a kid.
The story revolvesprimarily around the complicated and wonderful friendship betweenJohnny and Owen, but the peripheral of the story is as strong as its leaders. Even stoic John Irving would laugh at the brief yet memorable comedic moments of scathingly-sarcastic Lydia (Lindsay Nelson) and bizarre atheist Mr. Fish (Paul Herbert). Grandmother (Tanja Dixon-Warren) opines about anything and everything with delicious cynicism and honesty, true to the archetypal strong, no-bullshit older woman that Irving is known to write. Owen Meany’s parents (Kim Steger and Gabriel Carter) sit almost eternally in arm chairs under a ceiling that belches dust every time there’s an explosion at the nearby quarry, their bickering swinging from hilarious to despairing like an emotional metronome.
Like in all Irving’s work, dry humor and absurdity can quickly warp into chilling existential dread. Owen’s screaming encounter with an “angel of death” cuts deep in a moment when the audience has been made vulnerable and relaxed by witty back-and-forth chatter and Owen Meany’s uncanny childhood world-weariness. The play is reliably funny, adapted with precision and care by Simon Bent, but it also explores faith, death, and fate with remarkable depth. The religious figures in the play are blundering but benevolent, speaking their own thoughts on faith and God and belief while Owen Meany listens—and analyses—carefully. “She got me, and I got God,” remarks Rector Wiggins (James Gill) about his frighteningly peppy wife, Barb Wiggins (Rebecca Walters) on the subject of their relationship. Standing nearby, Owen Meany asks, unimpressed, “And what did God get?”
For all John Irving fans, and even for those who are strangers to his distinct wryness and unflinching honesty about the world and its flaws, A Prayer for Owen Meany is not to be missed.
A Prayer for Owen Meany is playing until February 9, 2018. Visit Pacific Theatre’s website for more information.
Issie Patterson is a writer and musician from Toronto and Nova Scotia. Her original stage plays have been performed in Halifax and Vancouver, most recently, Wayne Gretzky Never Takes It Black in the Cascadia Project on Granville Island. She is the songwriter and lead guitarist in the Vancouver rock band Swamp Romance, and also composes soundtracks for short films. Issie is currently completing her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia.