Highlight: A poetry reading that breaks the fourth wall
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Playwright Louise Casemore raises thoughtful questions about the value of employee-customer relationships.
Like Prude, Louise Casemore’s Gemini takes place in Buddies’s Cabaret space, a bar-like setting perfect for the slow-burning drama’s present-day timeline, in which Ben (Vern Thiessen), a gruff author in his 50s, reads out sections from his only published work, a poetry collection that managed to weasel its way onto the New York Times bestseller list.
Casemore breaks up this sombre literary event with two-hander scenes involving Julie (Casemore), a recently hired bartender, and Ben, a regular of the pub. Over several months, their relationship blooms from strangers to seemingly close friends — although a key question the play raises is whether such a relationship can ever transcend its transactional contours.
These highly realistic scenes drift along in a lackadaisical fashion — while directors Chantelle Han and Mitchell Cushman render the action in considerable detail, Gemini is on the edge of playing out too gradually. And though the Cabaret offers a nice ambiance, I found myself wondering if the control offered by a more traditional theatre space could’ve helped focus these scenes further: Gemini often seems to be unfolding from afar, when its intimate content would seem to demand close-ups. That said, after this central relationship has had time to marinate, the show becomes rather flavourful; its final 20 minutes are particularly intoxicating.