Review: A Year of Winter by Scott Sharplin
I went into A Year of Winter not really knowing what I was getting into. I went largely on the basis of the author, Scott Sharplin. I have not seen a lot of his plays, but I have found it fascinating to follow his career since I found his blogs about touring his show, Inferno Sonata, on the Fringe circuit last summer. Although these two plays (the only of his I have seen as far as I know) have been quite cryptic, Scott's openness in talking about the process behind the plays he writes (even the ones I haven't seen) has been absolutely fascinating and enhanced my experience as a theatre-goer. I wish there was more of this out there. Maybe there is and I just haven't found it.

A Year of Winter worked really well for me. It's set up in two very clearly delineated Acts, a year apart from each other. A particular mental breakdown sets the two acts apart and it is almost as if it was two short plays rather than one long play. It's hard not to point out that I preferred the first act to the second, for its bare, no punches pulled, portrayal of mental illness and its inextricable relationship to the act of creation in the form of art. But I also don't think it would have been complete without the second act to give us perspective on the insanity. To show us the schizophrenic break that precipitated act 1.

Two devices were used in the play to facilitate hiding the truth the play draws towards. First, the masks. In his blog, Scott Sharplin seemed very worried that the masks would seem pretentious or draw people out of the play. But I think in the end, the way he brings them into the story long before their use helps avoid either of those pitfalls. It also helps that the first use of a mask to denote a character shift is an over-the-top caricature of a radio personality. It's hard to worry about the mask when such a flamboyant character is on the stage. And by the time a more reasonable, understated character is on the stage using a mask, it doesn't matter anymore.

The other device is portmanteaus. The characters in the play have their own little language made of joining words together into new or existing words. It's a code that only they understand and that the audience is forced to learn as the characters rediscover their lost meanings. It also lends a realistic playfulness to their relationship that, in moments of clarity, contrasts the starkness of their illness.

Although the ending was touching and very powerful to me, I think it could have been improved. The first act has us looking at the inside of this relationship. From the point of view of the people inextricably entwined in schizophrenia, one way or another. Act two starts off by giving us an outside perspective, showing us the view from outside. Through the masks we finally see characters who were only presented off stage left, never seen, only occasionally heard or heard of. But in the final part of the second act, we seem to shift back to the insane point of view, and the shift is jarring.

The other downside to this play, from my point of view, was that while it seems well researched (mentions of an actual modern drug for treatment of schizophrenia in addition to the believable presentation of paranoia help lend credibility to the research) it does seem to skate the edge of an age-old misunderstanding of the disease that I won't explain here (as it would be a bit of a spoiler). I do not think this is intentional, but it could be taken that way.

The acting was all around quite good. Garett Ross as Terry and all of the masked characters pulled off the switching of characters well, doing each of them convincingly even if a couple of them were (necessarily) a little over the top. Tracy Penner as Alice did a good job as well, though in moments of non-lucidity had a tendency to play things a little over the top. She also seemed very familiar, though I can't remember where from. I didn't recognize any of the plays listed to her credit in the program, but perhaps she was in a fringe play I've seen.

Overall, I was quite impressed. The play ran the gamut of emotional responses, hitting the funny bone and plucking the heartstrings equally and appropriately. It kept its secrets well until the 11th hour and then revealed them with resonance. I anticipate Scott's next play, about Louis Riel and the Northwest Rebellion (the name escapes me at the moment).