RE___

Two historical figures become inexplicably intertwined in Freddy Syborn’s impenetrable RE___. Part biography, part fantastical reconstruction, the play takes as its inspiration the lives of Rev. Harold Davidson, a war veteran and priest known as the “prostitute’s padre”, and Nebuchadnezzar, the infamous Babylonian ruler who conquered Judah and Jerusalem.

Though these figures are never fully represented, they find expression through the speech and actions of central characters Amy, Frank and Dominic. It’s a confusing premise upon which to base a play, and one that Syborn ultimately fails to clarify in this ambitiously experimental piece of theatre.

The opening scene depicts a “call and win” TV gameshow presented by the glamorous Amy, in which caged callers compete to win cash prizes by guessing the correct word beginning with the letters, 're-'. This scene recurs throughout the play as the contestants and their suggestions become increasingly bizarre. It’s an effective opening but the relevance of the scene remains opaque throughout the play.

Susie Chrystak, David Isaacs and Adam Lawrence give energetic performances, yet the actors fail to create sufficiently developed characters. Syborn’s deliberately experimental script is largely to blame: incoherent monologues mask the characters’ motives, while chaotic twists render the dialogue bewildering.

An explanatory note distributed at the beginning of the show explains how the play developed from a simple biography of Davidson to (among other things) an exploration of “the distance between not only yourself and another—every other—but yourself and your self” and a study of the way we “fill our mouths with fiction to fight the distance we feel from ourselves.”

This reviewer remains confounded.