Review: At the front line of imagination, experience

Alexis McKeown photo

As co-writers of First Métis Man of Odesa, real-life couple and onstage duo, Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova are irresistibly charming.

Source: Winnipeg Free Press

Author of the article: Ben Waldman

Method meets the madness and emotion of war in battle-hardened romcom

One of the key facets of Method acting, as set out by the Russian dramatist Konstantin Stanislavski’s “system” of training, is perezhivanie, which encourages actors to embody their roles as though they were lived realities, erasing the border between imagination and experience to establish a oneness between character and performer.

Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova do precisely that in the triumphant, hilarious and moving First Métis Man of Odesa, a star-crossed, windswept, war-torn romcom that waltzes back and forth across the threshold that separates dreams from nightmares.

MacKenzie, an often autobiographical Edmontonian playwright of Métis descent, is not an actor, he tells the audience at the very beginning of the performance. “But in this play, a true story, I perform the role of myself,” he says.

Khomutova, on the other hand, is “three handshakes away” from Stanislavski, a devotee to the classics who prefers to keep her affective memories to herself.