Canadian Actress Fiona Reid
Omnium Gatherum at CanStage and Hedda Gabler at Shaw Festival
An interview with theatre veteran Fiona Reid, part of a series covering such great past roles as Suzie in Omnium Gatherum and Nora in Henrik Isben's Hedda Gabler.
As Fiona Reid is breakout performance of 2007, Suite 101 takes a look back to Reid's roles of yesteryear – as Suzie in post 9 /11 piece Omnium Gatherum (2004 Pulitzer Prize for Drama Finalist ) at CanStage‘s Bluma Appel Theatre, and tortured protagonist Hedda Gabler at The Shaw Festival in 1991.
In October 2004, Reid performed in Omnium Gatherum by Thersea Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros. Think of Jean Paul Sartre’s No Exit meets Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls but much spicier.
Omnium Gatherum centres around an uber-elegant dinner party given by Martha-Stewart type Suzie. In a suggestively fiery setting, the surreal dinner chat runs the vocal gamut from globalization, and American / Middle East Policy to eating rice and Star Trek – a hot debate with seven diverse points of view regarding life, love, and politics, after Sept 11.
Add copious quantities of the finest wine and you have deliberately volatile food for thought. The playwrights have great fun suggesting that these stereotypes represent famous names from author Tom Clancy to pundit Christopher Kitchens to late Palestinian advocate Edward Said. You literally guess who is coming to dinner.
This does remind me of Top Girls in a way – a dinner party – diverse characters all gathered for the hostess’ own purpose peppered with streams of overlapping dialogue amidst a five star meal. How does Suzie know all these people?
“That is really an interesting point. I think the premise is not vague but it’s a bit tenuous. I mean, I can only think that the way I define it is that Suzie has her own show and these are possibly people she has invited to her place in a kind of Oprah framework that she thinks – well, these would be interesting people to have.
The only one she seems to know personally is the Tom-Clancy type guy (Roger). He is the only one that she had any history with. But as to the rest, she is definitely introducing them to each other and she doesn’t have any personal history with them so – I find that a bit tenuous.”
Is Suzie a little paranoid? Does she feel that she has to be a part of what’s going on. And does she know what these people are talking about?
“She wants to understand her post 9 /11 world better and that is why she has had them over. She gets it. I don’t mean to sound arrogant when I say this, but one of the challenges of playing this character is that she is not as intellectually aggressive as I am. I have to sometimes pre-occupy my head with who has wine and who has this - that as opposed to engaging in the argument in a way that, I Fiona, would. I always plunge right into arguments even if I don’t know what I am talking about but I have read a great deal about this subject because I am very interested in it.
So no, there’s a lot Suzie doesn’t get. She wouldn’t know that Israeli / Palestinian history that I know, but I think part of it is taking on the… I don’t want to say ignorance, because that’s too strong a word.. but if you had a Muslim sitting at the dinner table this is what they would tell you. This is how they view your country because I think the authors are trying to get Americans especially, to take the blinders off a bit.
And I suppose in Canada too to some extent. I suppose it’s very easy to become preoccupied with one’s domestic world especially for the expatriate Muslim and the expatriate Jewish community that live here. It’s easy to just see your issue in terms of your own human rights and your own sense of victimhood and not to take on how you are perceived by the other side. What I love about this play is the challenge that it sets and I think it is good to get people to say ‘This is how you are perceived, how you are seen.’
In Part Two of this continuing series Reid talks about movie The Control Room and Audience Reaction to Omnium Gatherum.
