Superior Donuts

Written by Tracy Letts. Directed by Ted Dykstra. Until February 26 at the Coal Mine Theatre, 1454 Danforth Avenue. CoalMineTheatre.com.

This could be the first incepted storefront theatre production in Toronto — after the audience enters the street-facing Coal Mine Theatre on the Danforth, they meet another derelict-looking storefront window and sign declaring the space “Superior Donuts” (apparently, in the journey across the lobby, we’ve also ventured across our southern border — if only it was that easy).

As the titular confectionary of Tracy Letts’s 2008 comedy Superior Donuts, this doughnut shop is run by Arthur Przybyszewski (Robert Persichini), who inherited it from his Polish immigrant parents, in the slowly gentrifying neighbourhood of Uptown Chicago. While there are still remaining resemblances from today (in particular, the Danforth neighbourhood that the Coal Mine calls home) to Letts’s portrayal of urban cityscapes in the wake of the economic downturn, there are a few more throwbacks. For instance, Arthur’s entrepreneurial neighbour Max (Alex Poch-Goldin) runs a successful DVD business, so successful that he’s gunning to buy the floundering Superior Donuts (today, my money would be bet on the handcrafted dessert bakery).

In the play, though, we first encounter Superior Donuts after a vandalism attack (a dowdy set of dark green, fake wood and grey linoleum by designer Anna Treusch), with an unsavory word, that means both a cat and a woman’s genitalia, sprawled on the wall — a little too carefully in this otherwise realistically destroyed set. Arthur is barely holding on to his business, having alienated his only employee, and so depressed following the death of his ex-wife that he barely shows up for work. In fact, the relative normalcy of the people around him — primarily, two cops (played by Michael Blake and Darla Biccum), Max and even the sympathetic homeless eccentric Lady Boyle (Diana Leblanc) — emphasize Arthur’s despondency. Still, somehow he attracts these people’s attentions and affections. And with Persichini’s performance, he manages to make that understandable. Persichini is monotone, sloth-like and extremely dry, and he’s also magnetic. In Persichini’s hands, Arthur can certainly carry the action of the play, and it’s too bad that Letts interrupts the action with monologues in which Arthur explains his back story to the audience that are as saccharine as his doughy treats.

A 21-year-old black man named Franco Wicks (Nabil Rajo) is also pulled into Arthur’s orbit, strapped for cash and in need of a job. While Franco, a high energy and enterprising employee/blossoming novelist, carries the bulk of the dialogue, it still remains Arthur’s story. Even as Letts throws in one storyline too many by giving Franco a gambling debt (to Ryan Hollyman’s Luther and Jon Lachlan Stewart’s Kevin), Franco serves as the catalyst for Arthur’s redemption (and spoiler, he gets very little out of it). This is an especially troubling dynamic in Black History Month, using a disenfranchised black man as a tool to allow a white man to achieve personal and financial success while letting Letts’s discussion of race appear falsely progressive. As director Ted Dykstra, who delivers here a snappy and broad comedy, explains in his director’s notes that Tracy Letts “is able to let us into the lives of people we might describe as ‘marginal’… And he shows us how similar they are to us: we all want to love and to be loved.” One must wonder that posing an “us” versus “them” runs contrary to this point.

As usual with Coal Mine shows, the production is close to selling out with its limited seating and it’s the performances that make the journey eastward worth it. Afterwards, perhaps it’ll be another reminder to visit the Mom-and-Pop storefronts that are on the verge of closing across Toronto too.

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