Seven Oaks Magazine.

The Artist has always been the most convenient social filter for spinning mental illness into the romance of ‘Madness’; this alchemy has turned countless suicides – from Sylvia Platt to Kurt Cobain – into creative codas orchestrated by tormented geniuses. By having committed oil to canvas, or poems to paper, the cultural producer’s misfiring synapses and low levels of serotonin are transformed into the hallmarks of artistic temperament.

Nicholas Wright’s Vincent in Brixton, running now until February 11 at the Vancouver Playhouse, is a sober and compelling meditation on mental illness as it truly is (and to an even greater extent, as it certainly was, before the advent of modern psychology, psychiatry, and other therapeutic treatments and processes). Wright’s excellent script is described by the Playhouse’s artistic director, Glynis Leyshon, as an imagining of an actual period in the life of Vincent Van Gogh, when the Dutch artist was living in London, renting a room in a working class neighbourhood.

Young Vincent (played expertly, alternately hilariously and heartbreakingly by Vincent Gale, an extraordinarily talented actor bearing, here, an uncanny resemblance to Van Gogh’s self-portraits) takes up a room in the house of a widow named Ursula. Thinking at first that he is in love with her daughter, he soon comes to realize that he is, in fact, mutually drawn to Ursula, whose dark, unnamed depression makes her a kindred spirit to the equally confused and confounded Dutchman. Perhaps the only unbelievable element in the current production is that the script calls for the play’s other characters to be surprised to learn of Vincent’s relationship with an older woman; Ursula (played by Seanna McKenna) is so gorgeous, alluring and eventually – as her depression eases in the arms of her lodger – sexy, that any surprise registered at her having won a younger lover rings hollow.

But this is small potatoes. The production is outstanding, replete with blocking and lighting tricks recreating Van Gogh paintings, and recalling a similar (and similarly successful) device in Julie Taymor’s filmic study of the life of Frida Kahlo. Performances which seemed shaky through the first act – like Sam Plowman’s portrayal of a struggling, working class artist vying for a scholarship – tightened into the second, suggesting opening night jitters rather than any problems that might continue into the run.

But despite all this accumulated brilliance, the show is fairly stolen by Bard on the Beach alumnus Meg Roe and set and costume designer Pam Johnson. For her part, Roe parlays her small role as Van Gogh’s sister into first, a fit of comic brilliance and, second, a study of the invincibly naïve confidence borne out by fundamentalist Puritanism. The engaging beauty of Johnson’s set – tilted forward on a slight, downward-leaning angle to create the effect of a piece of art presenting constant challenge to the viewer’s lines of perspective – is absolutely perfect.

This is serious contemplation on heady stuff – art, illness, love, class, talent, learning, family and religion – tempered by pathos, humor, and a tender patience for character. My companion for the evening suggested, after the performance, that she wanted already to watch the play again, and that productions such as this one served as a reminder, to her, of the power and potential of live theatre. It doesn’t get much better than that.