Nextfest play readings: ‘Lightweight’ and ‘Carmilla’

Nextfest is a festival that showcases emerging artists, particularly in the areas of dance, film, music, and theatre. There’s also visual art on display and high school works being showcased.

As part of the selection of theatre performances at Nextfest, there are play readings of works in progress. These are works not yet finished and read by a cast of actors. There is no production, costumes, or lighting — just a stripped down reading of the script.

Lightweight

Written by Erin Ocha Whelan, Lightweight starts as a normal day in a gym as a group of employees begin their day. The humour and interactions between characters were the highlight of the play.

All of the characters’ voices and personalities were distinct from each other and set the play up for some interesting, and often funny, interactions. Nicholas is an insufferable rich kid who won’t shut up about “marketing” and his dad’s money. So many of his lines had me somewhere between laughing and shaking my head at him.

In stark contrast to Nicholas is the well-meaning, ex-body builder Colin. His character quickly became one of my favourites. The kind of lost, sort of depressed guy had his heart in the right place, even if he works at a sketchy gym.

Then there’s Kate, a psychology student and party girl. Kate doesn’t have a clear path for what she wants, right now or for the future. While I enjoyed Kate’s character, I wish we had gotten a little more of her story and how she fits into the gym.

And there’s Donna, the manager of the gym. Donna’s character was a little wacky, but motherly. She may or may not be in a cult, and the twist for her character towards the end of the reading hit the mark.

The dialogue between all of these characters was reflective of what a day at your wacky workplace feels like. It was funny, but rooted in reality. And the character’s dynamics with each other drew the audience in.

While Ocha Whelan has yet to write an ending to the play, it’s one I look forward to seeing fully fleshed out. Give it costumes, a set, lighting, and a finished story, and it’ll be a memorable play to go see.

Carmilla

This may be because I’m an original Carmilla fan, as in the novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, but the reading of Victoria deJong’s version didn’t quite hit the mark. The tension and mystery central to the story of Carmilla didn’t translate into this modern romance.

Instead of the slow build of tension and unease, there were moments of overt malice and temptation of violence that popped up throughout. They would happen, completely divided from the rest of the dialogue, and then everything would go back to normal. It just didn’t quite land for me, at least not as a Carmilla story.

The seduction of Laura, the lonely protagonist, didn’t feel as much like a seduction as Carmilla just throwing herself at Laura. All while speaking horribly — though it was well deserved — of her cousin and Laura’s husbandm Albert.

Unfortunately, it made no sense for Albert and Carmilla to be cousins. Carmilla is a vampire who has supposedly been around for a lot longer than one lifetime. How exactly they are cousins and how Albert has no idea something’s not right with Carmilla is entirely unclear.

More than that, it takes away Carmilla’s mystery. In the novella, she’s a complete stranger and unknown to Laura. That adds to the unease. But now, she’s an absent cousin who is painfully obvious in her plot to pit Laura against her husband.

The whole play felt a little juvenile, despite Laura being older than she was in the novella and having two kids. The dialogue, Carmilla’s plotting, and the romance between Laura and Carmilla all felt a little bit like a Wattpad story.

The play, of course, is still in it’s early stages. It has the potential to be a really interesting Carmilla-inspired story. It just needs to find the right place between being a Carmilla-play and being its own dark romance.

Nextfest runs until June 15, tickets can be bought online or in-person at The Roxy theatre.