I suppose it’s no one’s fault but my own that I don’t know much about Nick Drake. Other people seem to, even if no one seemed to know who he was when he was alive. Drake was a folk singer in the 70s who didn’t achieve much success during his short career and died young at 26 from an overdose of anti-depressants, probably suicide. Since his death, though, his music’s only gained in popularity, to the point that all kinds of British musicians list him as an influence.
The Nick Drake Project, meanwhile, is only tangentially about Nick Drake. Mostly it’s about the protagonist that can’t remember his name, who’s run away from his own life and finds himself in a very strange dream world full of bizarre characters trying to convince him that he’s on some kind of important journey, even though none of them are too sure where they’re sending him or why. Director Ryan Ward sits at the back of the stage, his back to the audience, and sings and plays Nick Drake songs while the action goes on behind him. It’s a pretty neat device, and sometimes more compelling than what’s going on in the play.
I gather that for fans of Nick Drake, there’s lots of references to his tunes here that will delight. “River Man” is the name of who the hero is supposed to be seeking, “Hazy Jane” is the name of a siren figure in a gauzy dress who tempts the hero to leave the path he’s on, the hero refers to a “Black-Eyed Dog” as part of a vision he’s been having, and are all names of Drake songs, for starters. The characters the hero bumps into are odd but interesting, including a very cool demonic Robert Johnson puppet that tries to keep him from his goal (Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil for his devilishly good guitar-playing abilities, dontcha know).
But the plot is more than a little difficult to follow. So many things are intentionally vague: whether this is taking place in the real world, a dream, some kind of limbo; whether the people are real, ghosts, some kind of visions; whether Nick Drake’s ghost is haunting our hero for some purpose, like to redeem him somehow, or to free his spirit from some kind of personal hell, things like that. I’m all for having a different sort of take on the traditional hero’s journey setup, but with practically everything in the storyline, every threat the hero runs into, and even his final goal being extremely vague, it’s like there’s nothing solid in the story to really sink your teeth into.
It doesn’t help that the protagonist (played by Jonathan Seinen) is exceptionally bland. Whether that’s because of Seinen’s acting or how he’s written I’m not sure, but he’s so uninteresting, particularly when he comes up against these other wonderfully strange characters, that it’s hard to follow him as the centre of things. Isn’t this his story? Shouldn’t he be different somehow than he was when he started? Why does it feel like he just gets thrown into this with an ambiguous feeling of being lost, then at the end the only sense we have of him being changed by his journey is him explicitly telling us he doesn’t feel that way anymore?
If Ward ever does a show playing Nick Drake songs I’d seriously consider going, but this play could use some work.
The Nick Drake Project has two shows remaining at SummerWorks, on August 14 at 8:30 and August 15 at 2:30, both at Factory Theatre. See the SummerWorks website for schedule and ticket info.