Cake and Dirt puts Toronto’s elite on a skewer

Cake and Dirt

Written by Daniel MacIvor

Directed by Amiel Gladstone

Starring Bethany Jillard and David Storch

At Tarragon Theatre in Toronto

Two and a half stars

Oregano

Written by Rose Napoli

Directed by Matthew Thomas Walker

Starring Diane D'Aquila, Richard Greenblatt and Rose Napoli

At the Storefront Theatre in Toronto

One and a half stars

Hate Toronto Mayor John Tory for coming from privilege? Miss that rabble-rouser Rob Ford? Siminovitch-winning playwright Daniel MacIvor may have written the show for you.

Cake and Dirt, which premiered at Tarragon Theatre on Wednesday, is an attempted excoriation of Toronto's elites. MacIvor opens a window into an upscale Rosedale condo and peers into the lifestyles of Hogtown's rich and low-profile, pitting old money versus nouveau riche, old wives versus new ones, at the 50th birthday party of a lawyer named Jeff (David Storch).

This isn't another play about a dinner party gone awry, exactly. Instead, we begin in the aftermath of the shindig in question, with Jeff's 25-year-old daughter Riley (Bethany Jillard) talking to the audience directly, playing a couple of ringtones that will prove crucial to the plot, and introducing the dramatis personae.

First, we encounter Riley's mother Bryn – played by Maggie Huculak, who delivers every line with the same repetitive, imperious smirk. She drips with condescension as she confronts Nina (Maria Vacratsis), the live-in maid and nanny who claims to commune with the dead, about a pair of missing earrings – and tries to figure out where her daughter disappeared to after the party.

Next, we meet Jeff and his second wife Naline (Laara Sadiq) as he searches through shoe boxes for the receipt for that mysterious pair of earrings, while nursing a hangover and a sore elbow from the night before.

Jeff had got into a physical altercation with a municipal politician that everyone refers to as Councillor Flip-Flop – and the play builds up to a flashback, where we finally meet the flip-flopper in question, entering stage left holding a plunger.

Jason, as Councillor Flip-Flop is actually known, got his moniker because of a bizarre taste in footwear – but properly earned it by changing his vote at the last moment on a plan to turn a park across the street from Bryn's condo into a "town square" and commercial development.

MacIvor has his work cut out for him trying to create a potentially corrupt, partying Toronto municipal politician who is more compelling than the actual ones – and, despite a solid performance by Patrick Kwok-Choon, Councillor Flip-Flop never becomes more than a cookie-cutter villain.

Indeed, most of Cake and Dirt's characters seem to have been imported from an old episode of Melrose Place than drawn out of observing the actual foibles and flaws of Toronto's well-to-do. In director Amiel Gladstone's production, there's a lot of posing and posturing – and the actors playing these upper-crust Upper Canadians show little below their smug or snide surfaces.

The exception is Jeff, who Storch turns into an entertaining creation. We first meet him wounded, then get to see him wound up, embarking on a controlled self-demolition, chugging champagne, crawling on the floor, hopping on the counters.

It's a performance that could be one-note in the hands of a less eccentric and off-the-wall actor than Storch, though it also helps him that Jeff is the only character who seems to care about something or someone. His passion for the park that has been destroyed by Flip-Flop provokes a speech that is a highlight of the show.

Cake and Dirt has a few good twists and turns and aha moments, but ultimately, it proves more exhausting than exhilarating, shaped as it is by cynicism rather than true curiosity over how power and money shape the city.

Maybe MacIvor's imagination just can't compete with the real municipal mayhem of the past few years. As for the play's palpable resentment of Toronto's elites, well, that's what fuelled the triumph of the populism that led to said mayhem. It's probably just bad timing: I, for one, welcome the return of our old Family Compact overlords.

Also on stage: Perhaps Diane D'Aquila should be the next Canadian actor to get a crack at King Lear.

In Rose Napoli's Shakespeare-sampling new play, Oregano, D'Aquila – long of the Stratford Festival, lately of everywhere else – gives us a taste of what it would be like to see her out howling on the heath. "Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!" she bellows – and, in the small space of the Storefront Theatre, you can feel the storm blowing away all that you hold dear for a brief, frightening moment.

D'Aquila, playing a mysterious character called La Strega Nera, gives one of three charming but aimless performances in this semi-autobiographical show. Napoli plays Mona, who has the rug pulled out from underneath her post-graduate uncertainty when her father dies in a car crash. Richard Greenblatt plays her father, the night before he died, and a young boy smelling of oregano.

Napoli's play is inspired by the loss she felt when her own father died in a car accident at 45, but its dream-within-a-dream structure is confused and its scenes are mostly purposeless prattle. It's ultimately a play about a writer finding her voice, and it's nice to see veteran actors such as D'Aquila and Greenblatt help Napoli try to find hers. I liked Beau Dixon's live soundtrack, playing drums behind a scrim in Matthew Thomas Walker's production – shades of Birdman.