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THE CREDEAUX CANVAS
Review

THE CREDEAUX CANVAS

February 1 2015

THE CREDEAUX CANVAS, Lambert House & BH Creative in the Reginald at the Seymour Centre; 29 January-14 February 2015. 

Keith Bunin’s play from 2001 is set in a fifth floor walk-up dump in Greenwich Village shared by Jamie (Felix Johnson) and Winston (James Wright). Described elsewhere as a “contemporary comic tragedy” and somewhere else again as “biting and funny”, The Credeaux Canvas is also classic, intelligent entertainment that should satisfy those looking for the “well-made play” and a good night out with some thoughtful stuff added for good measure.

Winston is an artist who’s scraping by on a part time library job while finishing his MA and waiting to be the next big thing. Meanwhile Jamie has been waiting for his famous art dealer father to die and leave him the wherewithal to become a next big thing in some field that isn’t real estate sales, at which he sucks. The play opens with his discovery, at the reading of the Will, that his father has left him precisely nothing.

It doesn’t take long – but long enough for some witty verbal fireworks and exchanges – to formulate Plan B. It involves Jamie’s singer girlfriend Amelia (Emilie Cocquerel) who is also waiting – on tables – while dreaming of becoming the next big thing. She will pose for Winston and he will paint a nude portrait of her in the style of as yet obscure post-Impressionist genius Jean-Paul Credeaux. Jamie will sell it to his father’s filthy richest and most gullible client, Tess Anderson Rose (Carmen Duncan).

What happens next lifts The Credeaux Canvas out of the seemingly predictable art-play genre in which it began. Tess turns out to be anything but the cliched wealthy chump and rather, delivers the psychological flips that send smug young pinballs Jamie and Winston, the plot and the audience off in unexpected and diverting directions. 

Along the way Amelia discovers ethics as well as heartbreak and sad maturity and Winston is revealed to be as uncomfortably facile as his brilliant talent. And Jamie turns out to be as much of a hoax as a human being as his idea of the fake masterpiece. All in all, from glib, smart talking beginnings, these characters are surprisingly three-dimensional and realistic, with many shades of grey filling out and transforming what might otherwise have been black and white caricatures.

THE CREDEAUX CANVAS

The production has apparently gone through the kinds of technical and casting hiccups that would have derailed most normal people – with Carmen Duncan coming in as Tess at the last minute along with new director Ross McGregor – but by opening night, little of these travails was apparent. Indeed, Duncan’s second half appearance in a virtual verbal pas de deux with unseen painting is a tour de force that earned her much deserved and spontaneous applause.

The pivotal role of the intensely focused and utterly selfish but still vulnerable – artist Winston is beautifully played by James Wright. As well as convincing physicality with brushes and canvas (not always seen when an actor is playing a “great” artist), Wright is also coltish and narcissistic in the way of a young Hugh Grant and it convincingly fixes him in place and also makes plausible the undercurrent of Jamie’s unspoken attraction to him and Amelia’s love.

Oddly, for a play about art and life, the least plausible aspect of the production is the “nude scene”. It’s flagged in the program (Under 15s must be accompanied by an adult) and that sets the tone for the raincoat and rustling newspaper brigade. The scene’s hilariously low lighting and coy choreography is absurd, especially as Winston has to awkwardly ensure the audience isn’t exposed to anything more shocking than his bum. It’s as if a breast or penis is still something that might have the vice squad arresting the audience for extreme titillation – and unbalances an otherwise strong reading of the play.

Nevertheless, The Credeaux Canvas is a play that has a lot going for it and this production brings out most of what’s there. Emilie Cocquerel and Felix Johnson are as good as their less flashy but essential roles allow and the set, by Emma Vine, is terrific: white dust cloth-draped walls, a grubby studio skylight and the classic New York bath in the kitchen screened off with tatted together plastic shower curtains. (Expect to see this touch in funky artists’ apartments any time soon.)

 

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