Politically, Christine Quintana’s new audio play Someone Like You is busy: it takes on fat phobia, racism, misogyny, and the capitalist commodification of human longing. That’s a worthy line-up of targets. Too worthy, as it turns out. Thematically, Someone Like You becomes a checklist — and it goes on for more than two hours.
Texturally, the production is snappy. Someone Like You is a loose adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac but, while Edmond Rostand’s original is in verse, Quintana’s variation uses the bright rhythms of situation comedy.
Izzy is the new Cyrano; like Cyrano’s big nose, Izzy’s fat body — or, as she frames it, society’s reaction to her fat body — is the reason Izzy habitually casts herself in life as the supportive friend and not the romantic lead.
When Izzy’s best pal Kristen breaks up with her dipshit boyfriend Devon, Izzy sets Kristen up on a Bumble date with a handsome, kind, politically progressive guy named Harjit. When Kristen bails on her first date with Harjit because she’s still hung up on Devon, she sends Izzy to meet Harjit and make excuses. Izzy and Harjit are immediately — and obviously — attracted to one another. Nonetheless, Izzy launches a campaign of deception. In text messages and even a phone conversation with Harjit, Izzy speaks for Kristen, wooing him with her own feelings. And she conceals her love for Harjit from her friend.
Izzy keeps lying, and lying, and lying — potentially setting up heartbreak all around — because she wants to protect herself, she wants to be “helpful”, and she thinks she knows what’s best for everybody else. All of this made her very annoying to me.
And, because, relative to character development, Someone Like You gives so much weight to political analysis, the play holds Izzy only partially responsible for her behaviour. In a critical exchange late in the play, Izzy says to Kristen, “I love you and I’ve failed you. I know. I know that. I mean, let’s be clear: this isn’t actually anybody’s fault but Devon’s, but I’m still so sorry.” Placing the ultimate blame on Devon, the cis, straight, white guy — and therefor the embodiment of evil in a script in which he appears for a total of about two seconds — may be an accurate metaphor analytically, but, narratively, it’s less than satisfying because it limits the potential for Izzy’s growth. Essentially, Izzy is saying, “Society made me do it” or “That guy over there whom we never see and don’t really know: it’s his fault.”
The script is full of polemical speeches. Izzy says, for instance, “How can it be that we, we humans, we beautiful, brilliant, delicate, brittle human beings, have become so convinced that we have no value? How can it be that our whole society in this part of the world is designed to make money from creating social strata …?” Again, zero problems with the analysis, but why isn’t it more theatrically embedded?
Then there’s the problem of predictability. It’s clear from the get-go that Kristen and Harjit aren’t a match and that Izzy and Harjit are. When Izzy returns from her first meeting with Harjit, Kristen is only interested in how tall he is and what he was wearing. She is presented as SUPERFICIAL, while Izzy and Harjit are DEEP.
This changes later in the play and script improves for it. In a flashback, Kristen turns into an intelligent and compassionate counsellor for Izzy. This new Kristen has more depth, which creates some narrative tension, some internal conflict: you kind of start pulling for her — but this Kristen is essentially a different character from the one we’ve been spending time with.
All of that said, in terms of its ideas, Quintana’s writing is intelligent and passionate and the actors pour playfulness and emotion into their performances. Steffanie Davis (Izzy) and Jasmine Chen (Kristen) fill their banter with energy. And Praneet Akilla makes a sweetly hesitant Harjit.
MJ Coomber’s sound design helps to keep things (essentially) light.
If only Someone Like You were more of a story and less of a well-intentioned lecture.
SOMEONE LIKE YOU By Christine Quintana. Directed by Ashlie Corcoran. An Arts Club production. Listened to on Thursday, May 20. It’s available to stream as part of the Arts Club’s four-part audio play series “Listen to This” until September 15. Tickets.
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