The Toronto Theatre Review: Red Snow Collective’s Carried by the River
By Ross
The piano plays a sweet arrangement as the shadows dance behind the gentle white draping, courtesy of scenic & costume designer Ting-Huan 挺歡 Christine Urquhart (Tarragon’s Cockroach), composer Alice Ping Yee Ho (何冰頤) (RSC’s Red Snow), and lighting designer Andre du Toit (Stratford’s R+J), as Red Snow Collective‘s compelling and connecting new play, Carried by the River projects itself into a sea of complicated caregiving and emotional maternal love. Written with an abundance of love by playwright Diana Tso (曹楓) (Red Snow), the engagement feels draped in symbolism and culturally significant movement. It’s an emotionally engaging journey, like a woman falling ever so slowly from the sky and landing in the warm waters of home, with the sole purpose of finding where she belongs and who are the people she wants and needs to have in her life.
It’s a story of mother/daughter grieving and familial connecting, and as directed and choreographed with a gentle emotional touch by William Yong (RSC’s Comfort), Carried by the River finds magnetic life-altering truth in the easy current memories and fantasies that flow there, spiritually and symbolically, with personified animal guidance arriving when she is in need. At the center of this flowing story is Kai, portrayed strongly and passionately by Honey Pham (fuGEN Theatre’s Kitchen Potluck), a young Asian woman, raised in Canada, who is trying with all her might to find the path of her fire towards a place of acceptance and homeland community. When her mother passes away, an alternate birth story floats to the surface, and she embarks on a transformational odyssey after a particularly (well-executed) bike ride into the river that fails to swallow her up. Another chance for familial enlightenment is presented on the shore, and she digs her heels into the solid ground in an attempt to silence the crying soul and sky.
“They hate me for lying, and for telling the truth.” One of the many strongly defined lines delivered with compelling connection by Pham, who is the heart of this piece, as she unpacks the complicated Kai in a bold, new world. She’s profoundly referring to her sexuality with that comment, but in a way, it also layers itself out to the new world she finds herself in, and the people that she comes into contact with. And even though the journey is a slowly drawn tapestry of interconnection; with herself, the river, and the memories told by her mother, the play holds us gently in its outstretched hands, coaxing us to stay along to the end.
Kai is quickly brought into a loving circle of warmth by a young woman, Ting Ting (& Monkey), played with care by the lovely Michelle Wang (The Second City), when she lands in China. Ting Ting somehow automatically knows their animals are complementary, befriending her straight up as if they were long lost family members brought together by destiny. She quickly becomes as important to her as a sister would, giving us all tingles of a happy outcome as Kai’s life is drawn and interwoven within Ting Ting’s family and world-weary existence. The road is bumpy and could use greater focus and drive, but the scenery that passes by feels honest and caring, even when murky and a bit cluttered with unrequired elements. The stage also could use a more expansive and focused landscape on a larger, broader, more open stage, but played out on Tarragon Theatre‘s small Extraspace, the closeness and awkwardness of all the pieces is well orchestrated, even when it slows down the rhythm, but does not disrupt the journey as a whole.
The world of myth and spiritual memory spins around the central character, symbolically coming to her aid through beautifully crafted, talkative symbolic animals, like the Bear, the Deer, the Tiger, and the harder to recognize Monkey, that attempt to help her understand herself and her transitional experience in the land of her birth. Kai works hard to find the patience she needs and discard her overwhelming need for control with the help of one of the more compelling characters in this lyrical tale, the ghost-hearing grandmother, Lao Lao (and the Bear inside her), expertly portrayed by Brenda Kamino (Tableau d’Hote’s Mizushobai). The other two purposefully drawn women; Rose (& her Deer), embodied by Shiong-En Chan (Théâtre Français de Toronto’s Le Menteur), and Mei Shan (& her Tiger), portrayed by Tai Wei Foo (符岱微) (Ex Machina’s Le dragon bleu / The Blue Dragon), float in and out with a little less fanfare, etched in maternal qualities and spiritual chattiness. They fulfill the surreal symbolic world with a profound engagement that registers, but also lacks a more pointed narrative that, in the end, leave us wanting for a bit more.
There’s a meaningful and loving integration of movement and folklore that elevates the strength of these female characters, but it’s really Pham and her strongly crafted Kai alongside Kamino’s engaging portrayal of the grandmother that gives Carried by the River its clarity and emotional current, without ever pulling the symbolism and cultural engagement too deep and down under into its moving flow of river water. The play secretly and quietly celebrates the idea of roots spread wide and far, from what appears to be a solitary tree, entwining all their melancholy memories and roots together in a stance of strength and beauty. The red string connection is sometimes jagged and tangled in its storylines, requiring the same level of patience and stillness that Lao Lao tries to impart on Kai, to keep her faith in her fishing, and to keep her from running the wrong way against the current. Yet, in the end, the overall arc feels gently satisfying, like the flowing of a beautiful river filled with nutrients and maternal love. Even if the red threads aren’t neatly tied up in a loving familial bow in those final last moments of engagement.
Red Snow Collective‘s Carried by the River ” is now on stage at Tarragon Theatre‘s Extraspace until March 23rd. For more information and tickets, click here.
