This play about love at Tarragon Theatre broke me for all the right (and wrong) reasons

It’s an enigmatic, hazy drama that tore me apart for all the right (and wrong) reasons. But even if the play never quite sticks its landing, its splendid North American premiere at Tarragon Theatre is still well worth the watch — if anything, to admire the beauty of director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu‘s delicate production and the probing work of this Canadian cast. 

The play’s characters are never named and merely referred to in the script as A, B, Woman, Man and Young Woman.

The language of “Profoundly” is like spoken-word poetry. Words criss-cross over each other. The repetition of consonants creates a constant rhythmic patter to the dialogue. It’s all dense and somewhat opaque, yet always enchanting to the ear.

This sonorous cacophony, however, makes sense. After all, “Profoundly” is a play told through a series of arguments, each part dropping audiences into the lives of its three couples.   

Green isn’t as much concerned with developing a linear plot and narrative as with evoking various feelings.

Her dialogue is purposefully vague and suggestive. It’s light on nouns and heavy on verbs — toggling back and forth between the present and the past tense. 

When we encounter the play’s first couple, A (Virgilia Griffith) and B (Dwain Murphy), green’s writing is initially destabilizing. Who are they? Are they together? Or have they split? Nothing is for certain. 

Otu’s production doesn’t offer many clues either. Jawon Kang’s set depicts a grey, liminal space, filled with square blocks that double as stools and tables. Time, too, seems warped, as Jacob Lin’s sound and Raha Javanfar’s lighting swoop audiences up on a dreamlike voyage. 

But ever so gradually, a clearer picture emerges of A and B, painted wistfully through a series of short scenes, told through flashbacks and in the present.

Their arguments cover everything from the mundane to the deeply personal, from sexual boredom and bodily insecurity, to TV remote wars and bathroom privacy. There’s much hurt and sadness that pervades their relationship — one of should’ves, would’ves, could’ves — but there’s also an unbreakable sense of love undergirding it all. 

This first part of green’s triptych culminates with a stunning revelation. It broke me. Not just because of what that revelation was, but because of how green set it up so beautifully, building up to that moment with maturity and restraint. 

What broke me too, though, was how this gorgeous climax is then almost entirely wasted, with the second and third panels of green’s three-part work offering up little except diminishing returns. 

The arguments between the second, older couple (portrayed by Warona Setshwaelo and Andrew Moodie) feel as if they were plucked out of a dawdling soap opera. By the time the third pairing arrives onstage (played by Moodie and Jasmine Case), I was repressing the urge to shout out: “Just go see a couple’s therapist, already!”

Even green’s humour, at first as sharp as a blade, begins to splay, growing increasingly broad as this drama progresses. 

“Profoundly” initially works as well as it does because of its vagueness. In A and B, we’re able to see ourselves — how love and loss overwhelms, eating away at us from the inside out. But what green then tries to do, unsuccessfully and unconvincingly, is contrive a narrative that links all three couples. This only punctures the magic that she’s worked so hard to sustain up until that point. 

However, the cast of this co-production between Tarragon and the Obsidian Theatre Company elevates green’s material in astonishing ways, lifting the colour and humour from a script that’s largely devoid of stage directions. 

Murphy and Griffith have mastered the play’s patter-style dialogue. He, with nothing more than an upward inflection in his voice, completely conveys his character’s insecurities. She, her body at times recoiling from his, wholly captures her disappointment. 

As Woman, Setshwaelo lobs F-bombs at Moodie’s character as easily as throwing dirty clothes into the laundry, contorting her face out of annoyance. He responds with nothing more than a double-glazed-over look of exasperation. Their deep-rooted stubbornness is undoubtable. 

And as Young Woman, Case offers a portrait of a character torn, between her family and her lover, her painful past and the possibilities for her future. She’s extraordinary. 

If green’s drama still doesn’t entirely come together, however, that feels only appropriate for a work about love. Because isn’t that how so many of our relationships ultimately pan out?

They begin with such promise, only to end in aching disappointment.