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Jam!Showbiz 11/18/06: Tom McCamus

Tom McCamus shines in 'Thom Pain'
By JOHN COULBOURN -- Toronto Sun

If you're inclined to measure the quality of theatre based solely on the amount of controversy it generates, then surely Will Eno's strange little entry, Thom Pain (based on nothing), is up there with the masters.

In fact, since TP (bon) debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2004, spawning subsequent productions in London's West End and on Broadway, it has generated a fair bit of heat from critics who seem to either love it or hate it.

Along the way, it has even been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, while Eno himself has been dubbed "a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation" by the brain trust at the New York Times, which of course begs the question as to whether the Jon Stewart generation is even looking for a Samuel Beckett.

Regardless, it's high time Toronto got a look at it -- and now, thanks to a production that opened in the Tarragon Theatre's Extra Space earlier this week, we can.

Happily, there is much to recommend in this production -- most of it wrapped up in the person of Tom McCamus, who tears into Eno's nihilistic monologue with both a passion and a precision that are compelling.

McCamus is cast as the Thom Pain of title, and it is quickly evident that the only things this sad-sack has in common with the acclaimed pamphleteer and the celebrated author of tomes such as The Rights Of Man are a name and a species.


If McCamus' Pain were to author anything, it would almost definitely be an attempt to catalogue the wrongs of man.

As he rambles through sporadic recollections of a childhood of neglect that, if they are his, have led him into an adulthood of broken dreams and disappointments, it is almost impossible not to feel some sort of empathy for him.

But as he recounts memories of a life that seems to have started on the shores of a mud puddle on a long-ago day when his beloved dog was killed in a freak electrical storm, and ended on the day the love of his life walked out on him, it seems equally impossible to establish any sort of bond with him. He's looking for things like love and respect, even while he pushes us away.

Under the direction of Jennifer Tarver, McCamus gives yet another in a long string of sure-footed performances, accomplishing the demands Eno's script places upon him with deceptive ease. Whether he is abusing his audience for his inability to connect, or painting glorious miniatures in words only to destroy them in a pique of childish petulance, he is never anything less than compelling.

For me, however, it remains an evening that is far more about the performance than the play. Given my druthers, this is an hour I would have far rather spent waiting for Godot -- Jon Stewart notwithstanding.

And it's worth remembering: Eno was nominated for a Pulitzer, but he didn't win.

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