Arts & Culture

What: SMART
Where: VideoCabaret’s Deanne Taylor Theatre, 10 Busy St.
When: Now, until Sun., March 30
Highlight: Nicky Guadagni’s charismatic performance
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: It’s a celebration of female authorship, sexuality and independence

LITERARY BIOGRAPHY is a genre that tends to create its own niche audiences. It’s rare for anybody to pick up a book that tells the life story of an author whose work they have not previously read. Regardless of how well-constructed its prose or how gripping its narrative may be, the reading experience would surely become clouded by thoughts along the lines of “Is this really for me?” or “Am I missing something important?” or even “What’s the point?”

That’s unfortunately a bit of what was going through my mind while watching VideoCabaret’s production of SMART. Here we have a biographical one-woman show about Canadian poet and novelist Elizabeth Smart, sharply written and adroitly performed by veteran actress Nicky Guadagni. To my shame, I have not read any of Smart’s literary output and, thus, felt somewhat on the back foot trying to let myself become absorbed in this narrative. That’s not to say that prior familiarity with Smart’s books is required to understand what’s going on. Far from it, in fact. As far as I could tell, the piece doesn’t appear to be too seeped in need-to-know references or in-jokes, giving the overall impression that the show emerged from a largely educational intent. What I’m trying to articulate here is a challenge of engagement, not accessibility.

If you’re a fan of Smart’s writing, this is obviously for you. Go. You’ll have a great time.

As for everyone else, it’s worth checking out, nonetheless. You’ll probably still have a good time but don’t expect it to change your life.

True to its caps-locked title, SMART is all about Smart, forcefully positioning her as a larger-than-life subject of emphasis. Beginning with her death at the age of 72 in 1986, the ensuing narration is framed as the reminiscences of her spirit, or perhaps the proverbial life flashing before her eyes. What follows is a linear trajectory from spunky youth to literary maturation to unexpected literary fame, then riding that wave toward moderately comfortable employment for the remainder of her days. There are even some fun jabs at Smart’s childhood neighbour and sworn enemy, future prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, a minor subplot whose inclusion conjures the classic VideoCab ethos of political satire.

Throughout these recollections, special emphasis is devoted to her longstanding love affair with fellow author George Barker. His intermittent presence in Smart’s life sparked the inspiration for her most enduring work, the 1945 novel By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. Curiously, her magnum opus itself isn’t as central to the narrative as one might expect, with Guadagni’s script eager to skip past its content and composition. The novel’s presence within the play essentially serves two functions: it gives Smart a therapeutic outlet to process her complicated relationship with Barker, and its success provides her with the financial security she needs to embark on a more independent second act. At its core, SMART is a story about one woman’s quest to find a room of her own but isn’t too concerned with showing what actually came out of that room once she obtained it.

The fact that this show works as well as it does is a testament to Guadagni’s raw charisma as a performer. Alone on stage with nothing but a white wicker loveseat for support, she commands attention with her dry wit and wily passion. Her spritely performance especially glistens in the scenes in which she unabashedly revels in sexual desire, something that we don’t get to see a woman of a certain age do often enough. Director Sandra Balcovske keeps it moving along with dynamic blocking that never risks becoming too stale. Greg Morrison’s gently mood-enhancing background score adds some nice touches, drawing special attention to itself during Smart’s pivotal love-at-first-verse encounter with Barker’s poetry.

Smart’s life was clearly eventful, but somewhat modestly so; a lot happens, but little that stands out as being terribly exceptional. That’s not to undercut the importance of her contributions to Canadian literature, and there’s undeniably a great deal to praise about her consistent championing of female writers. But, in my case, without the pre-existing connection to the biographical subject or her work, there didn’t seem to be enough to keep me fully gripped.

There is, after all, an important hitch to my opening observation about literary biography: it needn’t really be the case … right? When you think about it, most novels and plays have no difficulty getting us invested in the lives of people we know nothing about at the outset. How different is an unknown author from a fictional character? In both cases, we’re meeting someone for the first time. SMART is undeniably truthful, but not exactly stranger than fiction.