He sits in the darkened theatre at Soulpepper, watching as a woman and a man enter from a door to the right of the stage area.
In a quick exchange, they affirm their intention to go ahead with their plan. Then the woman Lauren (Michelle Monteith) takes her place atop a chair on a raised and spotlighted platform. The man Luke (David Patrick Flemming) remains standing below and to her left.
From his vantage point among the audience, he remarks the starkness of this setup: a chair, a light, two bodies in space.
He has no idea what he’s in for over the 80 minutes of Hannah Moscovitch’s Red Like Fruit: how deceptive this simplicity is.
He observes as Luke begins recounting Lauren’s experiences: her thoughts, her memories, and increasingly, her trauma. He watches as Lauren sits and listens: only occasionally does she shift or react with a gesture or expression that affirms or augments her externalized story.
His head moving back and forth on a tight 30-degree swivel, he tries to process the split-screen experience.
An externalized transmitter for Lauren, Luke delivers Lauren’s story in measured, precise, and matter-of-fact phrasing, accompanied by open, explanatory hand gestures. Sardonic, comedic, incisive and emotive, it channels Lauren’s lived experience as a woman with a candour and authenticity whose dissonance with Luke’s male voice makes the reviewer squirm in his seat.
He listens as Luke explains Lauren’s investigation of a sexual assault case . . . which begins to surface and intertwines with unresolved and confusing memories of Lauren’s formative sexual experiences.
He finds the narrative by turns sharp, wry, and uncomfortably genuine. Through both sides of the splitscreen, he registers the transmission’s increasing personal urgency.
When Luke breaks character to express concern for Lauren’s wellbeing and to query her intent for this exercise, he feels the layers of performance and reality sliding against each other like tectonic plates.
He knows that Moscovitch has said Red Like Fruit is “an opportunity to mess with the audience’s feelings about the role the male gaze and voice plays in defining how women feel about their lives”. Sitting here, watching and listening as Lauren’s most intimate thoughts and urgent questions are filtered through the voice of this man “Luke”, he feels thoroughly messed with.
And the experience is recursively meta: he is a male reviewer watching a male actor voice a woman character’s story, written by a woman playwright.
He finds himself caught in this loop of perspective. He appreciates the low-key tonal perfection of Luke’s delivery, the candor and clarity with which he articulates Lauren’s knotted truth, his affirmingly deep sensitivity. But he knows that Luke’s role as the caring, emotionally intelligent male observer, even in his ostensibly unscripted moments, is a calculated construction. They are a script within a script shining a second spotlight – this one metaphorical – on the question of who gets to tell whose stories, and how.
He finds that the production achieves something remarkable.
Lauren’s re-articulation of her intent, and what he understands to be the clear-eyed, pragmatic, and empowering conclusions that she reaches about the play’s thorny questions, satisfy him deeply. They feel right and true and maybe, just maybe . . . sufficient.
And yet.
In its distanced, minimalist staging for maximalist disruption, Red like Fruit refuses to provide the comfort and certainty that he craves from its ending.
So as he leaves the theatre, he carries both the weight of its challenge and the lightness of its artistic achievement. As another man trying to make sense of a woman’s truth.
Red Like Fruit is directed by presented by Soulpepper Theatre, Luminato Festival, and 2b theatre, continues until June 15, 2025 at Soulpepper Theatre. The performance runs 80 minutes without intermission. For tickets, additional information and audience advisory, visit soulpepper.ca.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
