Stage/Theatre

What: Quartet
Where: VideoCabaret, 10 Busy St.
When: Now, until Sun., Jan. 21
Highlight: Eija Loponen-Stephenson’s immersive set, which doubles as an art installation
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: It’s the sort of daring underground work Toronto could use more of.

THE CONTENT WARNINGS for Other Hearts Collective’s production of Quartet are a show unto themselves. A lobby sign cautions of violent and sexual language, simulated blood, flashing lights, explicit simulated content and images, plus mentions of death, sickness and suicide.

Yet this is not a circus of shocks. The experimental form of Harri Thomas’s production helps tell the story of a passionate relationship at the end of the world — and the result is as tender and heartbreaking as it is strange. Produced in association with VideoCabaret and performed at the company’s back-alley east-end theatre on Busy Street, Quartet is the sort of daring underground work Toronto could use more of.

The show is a riff on German playwright Heiner Müller’s highly ambiguous work of the same name. In Thomas’s version, an unnamed disaster has struck the world, leaving only two survivors, Valmont (Sebastian Marziali) and Merteuil (Silvae Mercedes). They pass their endless hours playing sexually charged role-playing games and fetishizing civilization’s remnants.

Or something like that. Plot is in no way the point of Quartet; most of the production’s ideas are visual or theatrical. The key player here is costume and set designer Eija Loponen-Stephenson, who erects a playing space that also serves as a kind of otherworldly visual art installation. Translucent plastic sheets cover the room’s walls, engulfing the thrust seating. And a collection of esoteric items — from dusty books to antique furniture to mannequins in lingerie — piles up all around.

An array of cameras and microphones allow Valmont and Merteuil to record their exploits vlogger-like as if they’re making a time capsule of humanity’s final moments. These cameras are hooked up to several screens and projectors, each in a different area of the space, transforming the theatre into a stunning cocoon of light.

Quartet’s atmosphere is intoxicating. It looks and feels more mature than shows with triple its resources. That said, Thomas at times seems to lean on the power of the production’s visual world rather than using it as a springboard for further theatrical exploration. The show is enrapturing yet somewhat stagnant.

Often, a critic will remark that they wish to see a successful indie production transfer to a bigger house. That feels inappropriate here, not because Quartet isn’t good — it is — but because of how thoroughly it embraces its underground-ness. It’s theatre proud to be on the fringes — and that’s a beautiful, vital thing.

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